Cate knew what she wanted now—to be a part of a team, to be a part of the back-up, not to be finding solutions to a problem that she didn’t think was one.
Cate walked up to Admin and knocked on Lillian’s office.
‘Cate!’ Lillian looked up. ‘I was just about to email you. We’ve sorted out the interview times.’
‘Actually, that’s what I wanted to discuss.’ Cate took a deep breath. ‘I’m withdrawing my application.’
‘Cate?’
‘I’ll stay on till you find someone suitable, of course. I’m going to have a think, but I might resign as Associate. I want to get back to nursing.’
‘You’re a good manager, Cate.’
‘Maybe,’ Cate said, ‘but I think I’m a better nurse.’ She shook her head. ‘It’s just not for me.’
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
PERHAPS THE BIKE accident combined with the anniversary had unsettled him more than he’d realised, Juan thought as he stepped off the train that evening and walked in the direction of Cate’s house. Saying goodbye had always been easy until now—it had always been about having fun, living life and then moving on.
And he would move on, Juan told himself. So too would Cate, he thought with a wry smile as he knocked at her front door and there was no answer.
She wasn’t even home.
Juan had never been stood up and wondered if maybe she had just changed her mind or, more logically, she had been caught up at work, minding Harry’s kids—then he heard the sound of laughter coming from the back of the house.
‘Cate?’ Juan peered over the gate. She was sitting at an outdoor table, dressed in shorts and that black halterneck and looking completely relaxed, smiling and laughing with a friend as she turned to him.
‘Juan?’ Cate gave a wide smile. ‘Were you knocking? I should have said—if I’m outside, just come through the gate.’ Cate walked over and unlatched it. ‘Sorry, I never thought. Everyone knows...’
Everyone who was in her life, Juan thought, handing her a bottle of wine and taking in the gorgeous fragrance of meat cooking on the barbeque.
‘This is Bridgette, my neighbour,’ Cate introduced them. ‘She came over to borrow an egg!’
‘An hour ago,’ Bridgette said, unashamedly looking Juan up and down.
Juan smiled and saw the nuts and the bottle of champagne on the table and, no, Cate hadn’t been nervously awaiting his arrival—her world would carry on just fine without him.
‘I’ll leave you to it.’ Bridgette went to stand.
‘Don’t go on my account,’ Juan said.
Bridgette didn’t need to be asked twice; she sat down again as Cate went to offer Juan a drink and then realised she needed a glass.
‘I can get it,’ Juan said, and held up his bottle of wine. ‘Shall I put this in the fridge?’
‘Please.’
As he walked through to the kitchen, Bridgette’s eyes widened and her mouth gaped as she looked at Cate. ‘Oh, my word!’ she mouthed.
‘Told you.’
‘I’ve never considered a foursome till now.’ Bridgette winked, making Cate laugh out loud.
Juan could hear the laughter coming from the garden. It was the strangest feeling, stepping into Cate’s home—it was just that, a home. To the right were two sofas piled high with cushions and in the centre a coffee table brimmed with magazines. There were bookshelves, which was something he hadn’t seen in a while, and he would have loved to browse but he saved that for the fridge! Smiling, he opened it and saw the contents were those of a busy single woman who didn’t have much time to cook.
Yes, it was a home but more than that it was her home.
It was almost as if Juan recognised it.
It was a lovely evening. James, Bridgette’s husband, came home from work and must have heard the laughter and known about the gate too, because he came straight from the car to Cate’s garden.
Juan wanted time alone with Cate, yet he wanted this as well. For, somehow, this way he knew her more.
It was nice to pause, to enjoy the end of summer.
‘There’s a cool change coming tonight.’ Bridgette fanned herself as Cate went over and lifted the lid on the barbeque and checked dinner.
‘Your skydive might be rained off.’ Cate smiled at Juan.
‘No, it is forecast to be fine again for the weekend,’ Juan said. ‘Are you sure you won’t change your mind?’
‘Cate, skydiving?’ Bridgette laughed. ‘James had to come and change the light bulb on her staircase a few weeks ago!’ Bridgette drained her drink and went to stand. ‘Now we really do have to go.’
‘Stay,’ Cate offered, as Juan took up the knife and started to carve. Her offer was more out of habit than politeness. ‘There’s plenty.’
‘I’ll leave you two...’
‘It’s not a romantic dinner for two.’ Cate grinned, trying to keep up the pretence for just a little while longer, trying to keep things casual for just one more night.
‘James has to ring his mum,’ Bridgette said as James frowned. ‘It’s her birthday.’
‘Oh, God, so it is!’ James suddenly stood.
‘Take some lamb if you want, save you cooking,’ Cate offered.
Juan had sliced the lamb in a way Cate would never have—thin slivers instead of her usual rather messy effort, and it looked somehow elegant. Bridgette licked her lips.
‘Yes, please.’
She gave them some jacket potatoes too and a plate with the mango salad Bridgette had prepared.
‘It’s normally Bridgette and James feeding me,’ Cate explained as she loaded the plates.
‘Yes, you’re not exactly known for your cooking skills.’ Bridgette said. And then there was the most terribly awkward bit. ‘It was lovely meeting you, Juan. Next time...’ And Bridgette hesitated. ‘Well, it was lovely meeting you.’
‘Same here,’ Juan said, and gave her a kiss then shook James’s hand.
‘They seem really nice,’ Juan said when it was just the two of them.
‘They are.’ Cate nodded. ‘Bridgette knows when I need tissues and when I need champagne bubbles!’ She met his eyes. ‘I just withdrew my application for the nurse unit manager’s job.’
Juan gave a wry smile. For a moment there, he had thought the tissues or bubbles had been about him. ‘How come?’ he asked.
‘I don’t want to talk about it.’
‘Why?’
‘Because...’ She blew a breath upwards that made a strand of hair lift on her forehead. ‘Because I just spent nearly an hour going over it with Bridgette and...’
‘She’ll still be here next week?’ Juan finished for her.
Cate nodded.
‘You know...’ Juan smiled. ‘I’ve got addicted to daytime soaps while I’ve been here. If I miss a couple of episodes I can soon catch up. I love watching it when I wake up from a night shift. I can’t believe I’m not going to find out what happened to the baby...’
Cate laughed.
‘And I can’t believe I’m not going to know what happens with you.’
It was the closest either of them had come to admitting how hard this was.
‘Well, you’re not going to find me with a clipboard as the director of nursing in a couple of years,’ Cate said. ‘I’ve just shot my career in the foot.’
‘If it changes anything, I did speak to Harry,’ Juan said. ‘Things should improve there.’
‘It’s not just Harry. I haven’t been as happy as I should be at work for quite some time now. That’s why I was thinking about being a paramedic. I’ve been trying to sort out what I wanted, what was wrong, and when I actually sat down and really thought about it I realised I’ve only been unsettled since I started climbing the ranks. I know what I love, being a
nurse in Emergency, and so that’s what I’m going to do.’
‘Good for you.’
‘I might regret that choice when I get my pay cheque,’ Cate sighed. ‘And I might regret it again when the new manager starts. I think they’re going to be pretty rigorous about who they choose.’ She gave a shrug. ‘Not my problem any more.’
It was such a bitter-sweet night.
Never had she laughed so much as he tried to teach her to tango and never had he relished more the sensual movement, the feel of a woman in his arms, the touch of another person and the ability to simply move.
To climb the stairs and see for the first time her bedroom. To have fingers that moved and could untie the knot of her halterneck—he took not a second of it for granted.
‘I am going to leave you money by the bed.’ Juan smiled as he undressed her. ‘Not for the sex but for a new top...’
He made her laugh. ‘It’s my Juan top, the rest are...’ Paul’s name did not belong in this room any more, the only name that would be uttered here was Juan’s.
She felt his mouth on her shoulder.
‘You are over him?’ Juan checked, and then made slow love to her.
Yes, she was over Paul, so much more than he knew.
Now she just had to get over Juan.
‘The reason I didn’t just leave it at sex...’ Juan spoke to the darkness as they both tried to sleep later, answering the bitter questions she had hurled that night ‘...is because I care about you and what happens. If things were—’
‘Please, don’t,’ Cate interrupted. ‘I don’t want to hear that if things were different we might have made it. I don’t want to think how it might have been if we’d had more time, because...’ It was as simple as that—his visa ran out next week. ‘We don’t.’
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
JUAN WOKE AT TWO.
He was on his back, Cate curled up in a ball by his side. He could hear the rumble of thunder in the distance and, as always, he moved his hands and then his feet...
Just to check.
He wondered if it would disturb Cate if he went downstairs and made a drink, perhaps put on the television. He didn’t even have a book with him to read.
‘What was it like?’
Her question filled the darkness; he was glad she did not turn. The psychologist on the spinal unit had asked on many occasions and the nurses had been amazing, but he’d answered them all correctly and just kept it all in.
By day.
Martina certainly hadn’t wanted to know and his parents and family he had not wanted to burden.
Cate didn’t see it like that.
‘You really want to know?’ he said to the darkness.
‘I do.’
‘Stay there,’ he said, and Cate screwed her eyes closed and did not turn to him.
‘It was very busy,’ Juan said. ‘For the first few days there are tests and Theatre and endless examinations and equipment and you keep waiting for things to change. Everyone is waiting for news, for updates and progress and it really has not sunk in. I had my fracture stabilised and it was wait and see. I had severe spinal swelling so they were unsure of the extent of the damage. I tried to stay positive for Martina and my family but I wasn’t feeling positive at all,’ Juan explained. ‘I knew, almost as soon as I hit the pavement, that I had broken my neck.’ He closed his eyes for a moment before carrying on. ‘I did not believe that anything the surgeon could do would help.’
‘You thought that was it.’
‘Completely,’ Juan said. ‘All the tests, the tentative diagnosis, my family trying to keep positive, I went along with it for them, but in my heart I was sure it was permanent.’
‘Were you scared?’
‘You are too busy to be scared,’ Juan said. ‘The day is full. You start at six with obs and a drink, then breakfast, then wash, then doctors’ rounds, then physio, visitors, more physio, exercises every hour...’ He listed the day. ‘Then at about ten you are settled and perhaps watch a movie. I used to sleep with the television on, but someone would turn it off and I used to wake...’ He hesitated. ‘You really want to hear this?’
‘Yes.’
He told her about the nights.
Finally, he told somebody about the nights. How it felt to be trapped in only your head, how every missed opportunity, every wasted moment taunted, how the simplest things mattered in a way that they never had before.
‘Every hour the nurses come around, day and night, and you have passive exercise. They move your limbs, your ankles, your hands. One of the nurses was trying to chat to Martina, trying to show her how she could move my fingers and wrists.’ He lifted his index finger and thumb and, unseen by Cate, started pulling them together and then apart. ‘“That might mean he can hold a cup,” the nurse told Martina, “or do up a shirt.” And then she showed Martina how to turn my wrist in the hope I could one day have a drink by myself, and I saw her face...’
‘Was she overwhelmed?’
‘She couldn’t do it,’ Juan said. ‘I saw her expression and when the nurse had gone she broke down.’
Then he told Cate about the night only three others knew about.
Because they had lain there in silence as they’d heard it.
‘“I can’t do this, Juan...” Martina couldn’t even look me in the eye to tell me; instead she sat down by the bed.
‘“It will be okay,” I said.
‘“When?”
‘I just lay there. I’d have loved to know that answer too.
‘“It’s not what I envisaged, Juan. When you asked me to marry you, when I said yes, this was not how I planned things to be.”’ He’d hated how she’d attempted a joke. ‘“You always said that I would be a terrible nurse.”
‘“I don’t want you to be my nurse.”’
Cate listened as he told her some more of Martina’s words, how worried she was about what others might think about her leaving him while he faced a future in a wheelchair.
‘I told her that I would always say it was by mutual agreement and I would have stuck to that, except she calls me now. Martina has a different recollection of our conversation. She says she was in shock, that she just needed some time to adjust...’
Cate swallowed, wondered if it was pride holding him back from returning to Martina, but Juan shook his head when she asked him.
‘I know, had I not got better, that I would never have seen Martina again.’
He told her how slowly, so slowly, sensations had started to come back. How it had hurt when they did, first his arms and then later his wrists. Then his thighs and slowly his calves and feet. ‘I did the rehab, I dragged myself to physio, I learnt to walk, and then she started to visit. Martina had decided that maybe we could work through it, that maybe I did need her help after all. I needed her long before that,’ Juan said. ‘I certainly don’t need her now. I flew to Australia. We were going to come here for our honeymoon but I came by myself. I was very thin and weak when I got here, but I spent months building my body up.’
Cate knew she had been right.
She had known so little about him.
‘Martina wants it to go back to the way it was.’
‘It can’t?’
‘No,’ Juan said, ‘because something like that is life-altering. You don’t go back to how you were. When something that big happens, you find out who you really are...’
‘And you are?’
‘I’m still finding out,’ Juan said. ‘But I’m not the person I once was.’
She understood that.
Cate lay in the silence, listening to his breathing, and, even though it was nowhere near as severe as what had happened to him, Cate felt she had been through something life-changing. Juan had changed her. She couldn’t go back to how she had be
en.
‘I’m a different person now,’ Juan said.
So too was she.
* * *
So different.
Cate woke to a sound that was unfamiliar—rain was beating against the window, heavy rain that was so needed. She thought of the firefighters and how thankful they would be for the reprieve, and the homeowners who had lived under the shadow of imminent danger for weeks now.
The threat had passed.
Just as Juan would soon move on.
All the attempts to safeguard her heart had been in vain and in a little while she would be doing what she most dreaded and saying goodbye to him.
She turned and looked over to the sight of Juan sleeping and smiled because she’d never thought she’d find the spill of long black hair on her pillow sexy, or that her toes might curl at what was now more than a few days’ growth—he officially had a beard!
And she’d never thought she’d be so bold as to move over and start to kiss his flat nipples.
More than that she’d never felt so inclined, or had wanted another so much.
He felt her lips on his chest and he lay there; he felt her mouth over his nipples and her tongue and he closed his eyes.
Juan loved sex, preferably quick. Hot, passionate sex was how things had had to be, not lying there with a mouth exploring, working its way down his stomach. He felt her hands move along his thighs, sensations returning, flooding his body, the slow burn of making love and being made love to.
He felt her hand grip his shaft, felt lips start to explore him, and for a second he wanted to stop her for, as it had in the hospital, sometimes feelings hurt as they returned.
Her mouth was hot and intimate and he moaned in pleasure and gave in to her.
Cate felt his hands in her hair, the gentle guidance of his palm. So many things had changed since Juan had come into her life—she could explore without shame and taste without guilt, just let herself live in the moment, for this moment at least.
Tempted by Dr. Morales Page 13