‘No,’ he said, but she’d forgotten what she’d asked, so caught up in the physical heat that had drawn her to Angus from the beginning, her mind was barely functioning.
‘Mu-u-u-m!’
Robbie’s tortured cry broke the spell, and Beth bent over the child, whispering to him, holding his shoulders until the convulsive thrashing stopped.
‘That’s the first coherent word he’s spoken,’ she said to Angus, her voice breaking with the pain she felt for the sick child. ‘And his mum can’t be here with him.’
‘He’s barely conscious and probably doesn’t realise that,’ Angus said, putting his arm around Beth’s shoulder and giving her a comforting hug, while she used a damp cloth to wipe the sweat from Robbie’s face. ‘Why don’t you take a break? I’ll sit with him for a while.’
‘No, you can both go.’
The voice made them both turn, and Beth smiled when she saw Marcia in the doorway.
‘Angus, this is Marcia, one of the nurses from the mainland hospital. Marcia, Angus. But, Marcia, aren’t you running the kids’ camp trivia contest tonight?’
‘It’s been cancelled and they’re having a movie instead—James Bond, especially for the older boys. Not to mention an excuse to have popcorn. So I’m here to tell you that Robbie’s mine for the next few hours. Remember I’m the one he came to when he felt sick—I’m the one who looks like his mum. So off you go. You can come back later, Beth, but you know he’ll be in good hands if you actually decide to have a decent night’s sleep.’
She glanced from Beth to Angus, seeming to focus on Angus’s arm still around Beth’s shoulders.
‘Or not,’ she added blithely, before hiding her smile behind her mask and coming farther into the room.
Would Beth tell him to return to the hotel?
Angus found he didn’t have a clue how she would react, but then, growing up as she had, in and out of foster-homes all her life, she’d learned, too well, to hide her feelings.
Though she had shown them in her anxiety to please, in her quiet determination to do whatever she could to make others around her happy.
‘The dining room will be closed but I can get some fish or steaks from the kitchen and rustle up a salad. Would that do you for dinner?’
The question told him she’d accepted his decision to stay and it was all he could do not to do a little tap-dance himself, except that, try as she had, Beth had never been able to teach him the steps.
‘Do you have a barbeque? And do we get a choice when you’re pinching things from the kitchen? I’m probably a better steak cook than a fish cook.’
She turned to smile at him.
‘You’re probably equally proficient with both,’ she said, smiling at him. ‘Apart from tap-dancing, I doubt there’s anything you’ve ever set your mind to do and not succeeded.’
He shook his head, surprised to find their thoughts had been so in tune. Though it had often been that way—to such an extent he’d sometimes wondered if it was their mutual difficulty in expressing their emotions that had led to them communicating through their thoughts.
Though back then he’d dismissed such ideas as fanciful.
‘Perhaps steak. I had fish last night.’
They’d reached the building behind the dormitories and although most of it was in darkness, a light shone above a door at the back. Beth produced a bunch of keys, selected a bright pink one and unlocked the door.
‘It’s like the corner store,’ she said. ‘All the staff have access. We write down what we take, and get a monthly bill. Far easier than trying to work out what food we want sent across from the mainland.’
She moved easily around the big kitchen, picking up a plastic carry basket and stacking her selection into it—plastic-wrapped meat from a cool-room, mushrooms, an avocado, some green leaves in a plastic bag, tiny tomatoes and, with a smile directed at Angus, a couple of onions.
‘Can’t have steak without onions,’ she teased, quoting him again, the smile in her voice making him feel comfortable and confused at the same time.
Surely they couldn’t be slotting so easily back into each other’s lives—not after parting as they had, both of them lost in bitter grief they hadn’t been able to verbalise or share.
And surely there was danger here, danger in the feeling of comfort into which he was sinking—as dangerous as quicksand, the sinking as inevitable. Yet the pleasure of simply being with Beth—being in her undemanding company—was too much to resist, so thoughts of danger were pushed away and the warning signals ringing in his head were ruthlessly ignored.
Back at her little hut, she produced not a regular gas-fired barbeque but a small, cast-iron brazier, with space for heat beads in the bottom and a grilling rack and hot plate combination on the top.
‘The single woman’s barbeque,’ she said, putting it down on a side table and lighting the beads. ‘Though it’s big enough for two steaks. Do you want to slice the onions while it heats?’
The question surprised him, reminding him it had been three years since he and Beth had lived together. That Beth would have sliced the onions herself, protesting, if he’d offered, that she’d liked to fuss over him.
And as he followed her into the kitchen he wasn’t sure just what he felt about this change—small enough but indicative that this Beth was a stranger, no matter how familiar she seemed.
Big mistake, suggesting he slice the onions, Beth realised as he followed her into the tiny space that was her kitchen.
She tried to stay as small as possible as she washed the salad leaves and whirled them dry, then cut the avocado into slices, but inevitably they brushed against each other and when, the onions neatly sliced, Angus swung around to wash his hands, they collided. His wrists—oniony hands held carefully away—caught her shoulders to steady her and their eyes met, then their lips, the kiss a question and a confirmation.
Was this what they wanted?
The magic was still there…
‘Onion hands,’ Angus said, breaking away.
‘And I’ve squashed the avocado,’ Beth managed, though she was sure she didn’t sound as composed as Angus had. ‘I’ll have to make it into dressing now.’
She studied the solid back of her ex-husband as he, very efficiently, washed his hands at the sink. The kiss had suggested that he’d been feeling the same residual attraction she’d been feeling since they’d met that morning, but was that all it was—remembered physical delight?
Assuming it was, the best thing to do was to ignore it.
And maybe scrape the avocado off her fingers before she spread it all around the cabin…
‘I’ll put the onions on first,’ Angus said, turning from the sink, her small pumpkin-shaped and -coloured hand-towel in his hands. ‘A plate for when they’re cooked?’
She pulled out a drawer where her assortment of crockery, mostly found at flea markets and antique shops, was kept and handed him one, wishing that particular one hadn’t been on top—who knew what Angus would think of a Donald Duck souvenir plate from Disneyland via the farmers’ market at Eumundi?
Not her, certainly, because, although he’d raised an eyebrow at her as he’d looked at it, he made no comment, simply carrying it, the bowl of sliced onions and the steak out to the deck.
How could she ever have believed their marriage would work? That plate was symbolic of the differences between them—Angus’s crockery had all been perfectly matched, square white plates and square black plates, varying in size so they could sit on each other in black and white harmony or stand alone—a black dinner service or a white one. Not a Donald Duck plate in sight!
But when she carried the tray with the salad bowl, cutlery and two more plates out to the table, the sight of Angus bent over her small barbeque seemed so right that for a moment she forgot to breathe.
Beyond him the sky had darkened with the sudden tropical nightfall, and the paler blur of the sea was the only demarcation between the earth and the heavens. And Angus stood there, s
olid, concentrated, complete within himself. It had been the completeness that had fascinated Beth—and she, who’d been such a mess of insecurities, had been drawn to him as the ocean tides were drawn to the moon.
Inevitably.
Irresistibly.
‘Still medium-rare?’
The man she’d been watching turned as he asked the question. She nodded her response, too afraid to speak, the secret heart of her wondering if this time it could be different—There was no this time, she told herself crossly. This was ships-passing-in-the-night stuff, a chance encounter, nothing more. The crisis would be over and, like the mobile decontamination unit, Angus would depart—leaving no way to decontaminate herself if she was foolish enough to fall in love with him again.
Again?
Admit it—still was the word.
She still loved Angus…
No! It was attraction, nothing more. She was still attracted to Angus!
Liar!
The smell of the barbeque, meat and onions filled the night air, reminding Beth her meals today had been scanty to say the least. She shifted shells to make room at the table and set two places, a strange feeling of displacement settling over her as she considered she and Angus sitting down to dinner in this unlikely setting.
Though the setting was no more unlikely than her and Angus sitting down to dinner together somewhere else, given how far apart they’d been when they’d parted.
‘Smells wonderful.’
The voice came out of the darkness but Beth recognised it.
‘Doing some spotlighting, Jamie?’ she asked, as the young lad came into the light of the deck, Stella Vavunis by his side.
‘No, just giving Star some extra practice with her leg. It’s easier for her to do it when the others aren’t around. Although most of the others are encouraging, there are a couple of kids staying over at the resort who come to the lagoon to swim and they freak her out. And it’s especially hard for her to walk on the sand, so we’re going down to the beach.’
Beth smiled at the young couple.
‘Nothing to do with the fact that the full moon will be rising shortly,’ she teased, and Stella laughed.
‘I think all Jamie knows about the full moon is that it brings good surf conditions,’ she said, teasing Jamie in her turn.
‘Well, have fun, the two of you,’ Beth said as they moved away, Jamie with his arm around Stella’s waist, presumably to steady her as she walked on her new prosthetic leg.
‘Cancer?’ Angus asked as he came to the table and divided the steak and onions between two plates.
‘It was in the bone. She lost her lower leg. She’s an example of how good the camp can be for kids—when she arrived she was determined not to use the prosthesis, insisting on wearing jeans and using crutches, but Susie, the Crocodile Creek physio, has been working not only on her muscle co-ordination but on her self-esteem, and she’s done wonders.’
‘I imagine young Jamie hasn’t hurt her self-esteem either,’ Angus said, nodding to where the pair were now heading for the harder sand at the edge of the water. ‘He’s some young man, to be prepared to help her the way he is.’
Beth nodded.
‘I suppose, having been through cancer treatment himself, he has more understanding than a lot of kids his age. Or maybe he was always going to be a very special young man. Whatever, he’s been great and Stella—he calls her Star—has blossomed under his friendship.’
‘Young love!’ Angus said softly, then he looked across the table at Beth.
‘Did you ever feel it?’
She had just sliced off a piece of meat and balanced it and some onion rings on her fork, when Angus asked the question.
Only when I met you, didn’t seem like an appropriate answer, for she’d been past young at twenty-five, but that had been exactly how she’d felt—like a giddy, dizzy teenager plunged into something she didn’t fully understand.
She shook her head.
‘I was moving around too much. I started my teens with a foster-family in Brisbane, then my grandmother in Gympie decided she wanted me, then I went back to a different foster-family. Moving around meant I missed school so I was always trying to catch up on schoolwork.’
‘Yet you still qualified for medical school.’
Angus spoke so quietly Beth had to look at him to make sure she’d heard it right.
‘Of course. I’m sure I told you some time that being a doctor was my only ambition. I was five when I had to have my tonsils and adenoids out and the doctor I was taken to was so kind and gentle I knew right from then that one day I’d be a doctor and be kind and gentle to little kids.’
Angus had heard the story, but hearing it again made something shift in his chest at the idea of a child so young deciding on an ambition because a stranger had been kind to her.
How little kindness must she have known that this had made such an impression?
She might talk about the benevolence of her foster-families and protest that she had never been ill-treated, but neither had she been loved.
And if anyone deserved to be loved, it was Beth.
Which, now he remembered, had been why he’d walked away from their marriage without argument. Because Beth, of all people, deserved more than a man who didn’t know how to love…
Not properly…
Not the way Beth deserved to be loved…
He was eating and thinking about this, when the wail of a baby nearby stopped his fork on the way to his mouth.
‘A baby? Do you have babies in the camp?’
Beth smiled across the table at him.
‘That’s the cry of the shearwaters. Now it’s dark they’ll start up—you’ll hear them all night.’
‘They cry like babies and burrow into the ground to nest—what else do they do, these strange birds?’
‘Well, to me the marvel of them is that the adults migrate before the young are strong enough to fly all the way to Siberia, yet the young know where to go, and no doubt where to stop on the way to feed.’
‘Ah! Light-bulb moment. Thank you, Beth. It’s been bothering me all day, something I’d read or heard about our migratory birds, and you mentioning feeding places brought it back. Apparently there are tidal flats on the Korean peninsula where a lot of migratory birds break their journey to Australia, and recently the flats were closed off by a wall, millions of shellfish died and migrating birds were left without food for their migration. Maybe Grubby is right—the birds are dying of starvation.’
‘Grubby? You’ve met Grubby?’
Beth sounded a little lost so Angus had to smile and touch her reassuringly on the hand.
And having touched her, surely leaving his hand covering hers for a short time wouldn’t hurt.
‘I have indeed, and now, if you’ve finished eating, why don’t we, too, walk down to the beach—maybe not in the direction Stella and Jamie took—and watch the moon rise over the water?’
Beth stared at him, unable to believe Angus had suggested something so romantic.
Or why!
Though maybe it wasn’t romance he was thinking of—maybe the moon might help him remember more about the feeding habits of migratory birds on tidal flats in Korea.
And although her head told her that walking on the beach in the moonlight with Angus was little short of madness, her heart assured her head it could handle it this time. After all, Angus was no longer her first love. She had changed, matured, become so much more sure of herself, as a doctor and as a woman. She could handle a little romance on the beach.
If that’s what he had in mind…
She stacked the dirty dishes on the tray and carried them inside, noticing the breakfast things still waiting to be washed.
Do them now, common sense suggested, but Angus had followed her inside with the salad bowl and when she turned he took her in his arms and her last rational thought was that they probably wouldn’t see the moon rise this particular night.
Kissing Angus was so familiar yet s
o different. She recognised the taste of him, the texture of his lips, recognised, too, her body’s reaction—the heat, sizzling deep inside her, shafting downwards. Yet the way he held her, gently, barely touching her, as if expecting her to pull away at any moment—that was different.
But how could she pull away when the spell Angus had cast over her from the first time they’d kissed still held her firmly in its grip?
‘Angus.’
She breathed his name against his lips and felt hers whispered back. Just so had they always made love— silently—nothing but their names confirming their identities as if in kissing, touching, loving they might lose themselves and need to know again just who they were.
His arms engulfed her, wrapping her in the security of his body, holding her close so all her doubts and fears and uncertainties were kept at bay. This, too, had always been the way. Safe in Angus’s arms she’d lost the insecurities that had plagued her all her life, living for the moment, living, eventually, for him, and then for Bobby…
His lips were tracing kisses down her neck, then up again, resting where her pulse beat—wildly and erratically she was sure. They found her mouth again and claimed it, a kiss so deep it drew all air from her lungs and left her gasping, clinging, wanting more than kisses.
Could he still read her so well that he lifted her into his arms, carrying her as easily as if she were a child into the bedroom where she’d tossed and turned hours earlier?
He lowered her onto the bed and knelt beside her, brushing back her hair, repeating her name, a note of wonder she hadn’t heard before in his voice.
But that short journey had brought doubts in its trail—what was she doing? How could she think of rushing back into—into what? It was hardly a relationship.
Soft kisses—exploratory—moved across her skin, her name a mantra on Angus’s lips.
She could barely think, and what was Angus doing? Thinking Angus, who was so controlled.
Angus, who always thought things through…
Or nearly always.
Angus—the man she’d loved—
Still loved?
She supposed so, but that didn’t mean…
Thoughts twisted in her head as she kissed and was kissed, thoughts doing nothing to stop the hunger rising in her like a king tide, threatening to lift her on its curling waves and carry her to a far-off shore.
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