“No,” she said. “I’m sorry. I’m just having a bad day. I...I’ve got a lot on my mind.” She wasn’t about to admit that she’d be lonely without him in the big, almost empty house. She didn’t seem to notice being alone before...before Jake. As it was, she’d decided to move out on the same day he returned to the city to catch his flight back to Europe. Being in the house on her own just wasn’t an option anymore.
“Hey Nic,” he said softly, moving toward her. “We all have bad days. What’s really bothering you? Are you missing Mark? It’s quite okay for you to have these moments. Don’t be so hard on yourself.”
She looked at him through the tears stinging the back of her eyes, dampening her lashes. Nic wanted to scream at him. Confusion stemmed from her residual feelings for her late husband and the attraction she felt for Jake. How was she supposed to feel under such circumstances, for goodness sake?
“Come here, Nic.”
Again his soft voice caressed her, made her insides melt. He reached for her and pulled her into a warm, comforting embrace. She breathed in the scent of him, feeling cherished, protected. For a few moments she’d allow herself some respite from her worries and enjoy the closeness.
His broad chest felt strong beneath her cheek as he cradled her to him, his heart beating against her skin.
She loved the way he shortened her name too. It sounded, so, so personal, special. In Jake’s arms, she felt special and entertained the reckless thought of becoming more intimately involved with him.
Her pulse began to beat erratically at the very idea.
His knuckles tenderly brushed her cheeks and a delicious shudder heated her body. She liked his touch. That was one of the things she missed during those long lonely days and nights...the gentle warmth of a human touch.
The combined grip of his power and charm was no match for her vulnerability and she fought hard against throwing caution to the winds.
“Jake,” she whispered. His hands cupped her face and he lowered his mouth and feathered a tender kiss against her lips.
“Nic,” he murmured. “Something’s happening here.” He brushed a knuckle against her cheek. “Should we do something about it?”
She shrugged, unable to make her mind work fast enough to combat the stirring within her and string a coherent sentence together.
Nicolette stared up at him, her heart beating furiously. She ordered herself to stop behaving like a school girl and not to read anything into Jake Harrigan’s flirtations. But a little tiny part of her wanted to play make believe. And play make believe with no one else but Jake.
“Jake....”
She broke away from his embrace and ran from the room.
* * *
“Where the hell is she?” Jake paced the length of the verandah.
He hadn’t followed her when she’d run from the kitchen, believing she needed some privacy to sort herself out. In his experience some women seemed to prefer to do that without a man’s interference. Was Nic one of those women? In retrospect, he kicked himself for not finding out.
He’d dozed off in the banana lounge beneath the trees and dreamed of her, expecting to find her in the pool when he woke. But she wasn’t there, or anywhere else. As time moved on, and she didn’t show, his anxiety grew. Had he frightened her off with his timely though intimate question? He should have kept his big mouth shut, kept his thoughts to himself. He hadn’t expected her to react so strongly. He thought she’d just say no and be done with it.
Jake went to her bedroom. The door was open but the room was empty.
He shouldn’t have got so close and should have left his question unasked. But since he’d been so foolish and voiced his thoughts, he shouldn’t have let her go without following her to make sure she was all right.
He checked the pool and the immediate area around the house. He could see the small runabout bobbing around on the river, but still anchored to the bank, so knew she wasn’t on the water.
Unless she was in the river. He shook his head. “No, she never swims in river.” He clung to that thought like a lifeline.
Then where the hell was she?
She couldn’t be too far away. Her car was still parked under the carport alongside his.
Fear gripped him. If anything had happened to her....
He fought back memories of far away places, of missing colleagues, the sights and sounds of war, and he broke out into a cold sweat. He had to keep reminding himself that this was home turf, not some troubled country torn apart by war. But danger lurked everywhere, probably more so closer to home.
Back in the house, Jake continued to pace.
Mark would haunt him from the grave if something happened to her.
A chill seeped into his bones. He hoped she hadn’t done something stupid. Surely not. There was only one thing left to do and that was to look for her in the bush.
Was he overreacting? He didn’t think so. Too bad if he was. Better he act now, rashly, than live to regret that he didn’t act at all. He’d been waiting and looking for well over an hour for her, and had dozed for at least an hour before that.
What if she’d been bitten by a snake? What if she’d slipped from one of the huge boulders and fallen onto a rocky ledge overlooking the river? Either way, she’d be hurt and in need of help.
Jake grabbed two of the water bottles sitting on the kitchen sink and filled them, thinking about which way he should go. He remembered one route they’d taken that had been her favorite. It followed the river then up the incline to a ledge beneath a huge boulder. The shelter offered a view of the Hawkesbury, toward Wiseman’s Ferry, and though the tiny township hadn’t been visible from there, it was possible to see the cable-drawn punt as it made its way across the water.
He stuffed the two plastic bottles into a small cooler bag, slipped the strap over his shoulder and set off through the vaguely familiar territory, carefully picking his way over the rough terrain toward the river.
He called her name, but there was no answer. The stillness of the bush drove him on. Even the monotonous drone of the cicadas had softened to a dull, rough hum.
Jake pushed on, leading away from the water now, moving uphill. If Nic was hurt, he had no idea how he would get her out. But for now, that was the least of his worries. He had to find her first.
A deeper feeling gnawed away at his anxiety over her welfare. He didn’t want to think about the fact that perhaps it was more than her welfare he cared about.
“Nic. Coo-ee. Nic.” He paused to listen for her answer.
Not even the cicadas responded now.
He called again.
Silence cloaked him.
He pushed on, becoming more uneasy by the second. The Australian bush was nothing like the places he’d been. The bush had a peace all its own, but underlying that peace was something more sinister. A trap for the unwary. He’d bushwalked in his younger days, and knew the risks. If he couldn’t find her within a reasonable time, he’d go somewhere for more expert help. He had no choice.
Further up the hill, he stopped to take stock of his position, helping himself to a swig or two of the cool water. Jake wiped his brow with the back of his hand, took another drink, secured the bottle and pushed on. He was getting closer to the spot Nic had taken him before. He hoped to God she was there.
A few minutes more and he found her. Relief coursed through him and he offered a silent prayer of thanks. She sat on a log. Her ankle propped up on her thigh. For a while he’d convinced himself he’d find her sprawled in the dirt at the base of a cliff.
“Hey, Nic!”
Startled, Nic turned and glared at him, then her features softened. But she didn’t look...right. Something was wrong. Uneasiness gripped his heart.
“Go away, Jake.”
He was taken aback by her reaction to his presence. “I didn’t mean to startle you. Are you hurt?” He crouched before her, his hands running over her calves, her ankles, checking for signs of damage.
She shoved his hands
away. “I’m all right. Just leave me alone.”
“Hell, Nic, I was worried about you. What if you’d had a fall, been bitten by a snake or a spider?”
She shrugged. “What would it matter?”
“Don’t talk rubbish.”
She tried to push him away as he approached her again.
“What the hell?” He realized she’d been crying. He sat beside her on the log and put his arm around her.
“What is it?”
She shook her head.
“Are you upset about what I said, about that kiss?”
She looked at him through glistening eyes and shook her head again. Tears tumbled down her cheeks and she tried to both smile and wipe them away at the same time.
“No, it’s not that. Not you. It’s me. I thought I’d got past this stage. That’s what’s so annoying. Just when I think everything is fine and I can move ahead, I take a step backwards. I...I’m...in spite of everything, I’m just finding it hard to let go and move on.”
“It will be like that for a while,” he cautioned. “You learn to roll with the punches. You said it yourself. Some days are better than others.”
“I...I suppose so.” She sniffed. “It’s not like I want to forget Mark, just put him to rest.”
“It will happen, Nic. It just takes time.”
“You sound like you’ve been there, done that.”
“Yeah. In my line of work, more often than I care to remember.”
His other arm reached over and his fingers brushed away the tears that formed tiny droplets beneath her lashes. She leaned into him, firing up his protective streak, and his arm tightened around her. Above the earthiness of the bush he smelled the sweetness of her perfume, and the warm scent of woman. It blended with nature’s spicy potpourri, mingled with the warmth of the day.
“I get so cranky with myself for being like this. Angry with Mark for dying and leaving me. Angry with myself. It just happens, I know. Mark’s gone, he’s never coming back, and behaving like this isn’t going to resolve anything.”
He held her a little bit tighter.
“I don’t know what brought it on. It came out of nowhere. There are things I have to sort through....” She looked up at him. “I feel a kind of relief over Mark’s death. There’s a certain amount of guilt in there too, yet I miss him like crazy. It just overwhelms me. I don’t know how I should feel.”
“It’s all part of grieving. There’s nothing unusual about feeling this way over the death of a loved one. It’s a common enough emotion, not necessarily triggered by any particular thing.”
He felt the tremble through her body as she tried to hold back her tears. His own heart went out to her. Nic’s words had echoed some of his own emotions over Mark’s death. Jake also carried the added burden that he found it hard to resist the thought that Nic was free...if he wanted to pursue her.... The feel of her in his arms, the memory of the taste of her...if Nic gave the word, he wouldn’t be able to hold back.
“Maybe my being here, turning up out of the blue has something to do with it.”
A sigh escaped her, as if she were fed up with herself and her emotions. “I don’t know, Jake. There were times I felt this way before you arrived. Maybe your presence reinforces it. Maybe not.”
She sat upright and eased away from him. Jake loosened his grasp and fumbled with the water bottles, handing one to her. He felt a strong sense of loss with the coolness that settled where warm body had been.
The tears had all but gone and an inner strength he’d begun to recognize and admire, crept over her face. She took a deep breath. But it was still a little shaky and he knew she fought hard to maintain her resolve.
“I needed to get away, needed the workout. I felt the walls closing in, that’s why I took off. Did you really come looking for me?” She helped herself to the water and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand before giving the bottle back to him.
“I wondered where you were,” he said softly. “At first I thought you might have been upset...about this morning. Then when you didn’t come back, I thought something had happened to you. I don’t care for you going out alone like that. Next time, I’ll come with you.”
“Jake. This is what I do when you’re not here if I need to escape, have a quiet think. I’m on my own, but I have to keep living. I can’t closet myself away from everything I like to do. Even when Mark was alive, he didn’t always come with me on my walks.”
Jake’s stomach twisted in knots. He couldn’t handle the thought that she put herself in danger like this. That Mark had let her. “He should have taken better care of you,” he said gruffly. “Mark never did know how to look after a woman.”
There was a moment’s silence and she looked as if she were about to say something. He hoped she wouldn’t ask him questions about Mark he’d rather not answer. “If you were my woman, I’d take better care of you.”
“Oh?” A perfectly shaped eyebrow arched in invitation for him to tell her more.
She dampened her lips and he wondered if she realized she’d done that, let alone what it did to a man. He wanted to kiss her so badly, he could almost taste her. No more than a subtle inclining of his head would make it happen. Involuntarily his face lowered to hers. Any moment and their lips would touch.
“And how would you propose to do that? Or shouldn’t I ask?”
What was she talking about? Then he remembered his boast.
The question was out now and, trying to make light of his reckless statement, he said the first thing that came into his head. “Well, let’s see,” he drawled lazily. “I would keep you in bed, keep you pregnant, tie you to the bed if I had to.” He waggled his brows at her. “How about it, Nic?”
He’d expected her to laugh at his preposterous statement. Instead, she thumped him on the arm. “God, Jake, you belong in the dark ages. You haven’t changed a bit. Get a life.”
She made to move away, but he pulled her back, his large hands gripping her upper arms. “That’s only what I want you to think. At least I got a reaction out of you. That’s all I wanted. To see your old spark back again.”
“My old spark? Next time you might get more old spark than you bargained for.”
With that she pushed him away and stormed off into the bush.
“I’m going home,” she called over her shoulder. “Since you found me so easily, you can find your own way back.”
Jake laughed. Nic had plenty of fire left in her yet. And he told himself that was all he cared about. That she had enough inner strength and fire to keep her going. Tempted as he was to sample more of her spark, he wasn’t going to let himself be burned by her.
* * *
Nic watched Jake leisurely swim the length of the pool. Each stroke powered through the sparkling water, his strong, broad shoulders and tanned skin glistening in the sunshine. He drew up beside her, his breathing barely noticeable.
More and more, she was aware of the strength of his presence when he stood beside her. Her heart volunteered her body to press closer to him, but her mind cautioned against such a reckless move. Finding it difficult to ignore the beads of water sliding down his broad chest, Nic closed her eyes and took a deep breath to still the beating of her heart.
“Thanks...thanks for coming after me,” she said begrudgingly. She stood surveying the view across the river. “I should have been more appreciative that you cared enough to come looking for me.”
“No problem. I’d do the same for anyone.”
That took the wind from her sails. Even though she hadn’t let on at the time, that Jake had made the effort and cared enough to search for her because he was worried, touched her deeply. She could get used to his kind and thoughtful ways. His protective presence.
But she mustn’t let herself. She had to make it on her own, carve out a future for herself. She couldn’t rely on Jake. He wouldn’t be around for long. Now wasn’t the best time for complications in her life, not while there were issues borne from Mark’s death to b
e worked out. Nic didn’t want to think about those things, but with Jake sharing her house, it was becoming more difficult not to.
She’d almost told him, in minute detail, there in the bush, about what her life was like with Mark, about his death. About how the other fear, of returning to public life had overwhelmed her too. Not to mention her confused emotions over Jake’s potent presence. He was wrong for her. She just had to keep telling herself that. If she could just banish him from her thoughts, then she’d have better control of her emotions. She wouldn’t feel anything for him. It was as easy as that. But if the theory was so simple, why couldn’t she extricate Jake’s constant presence from her thoughts?
She studied his taut features. “I know you’ve been through some tough times yourself.”
“You don’t want to know.” He pushed back his wet hair and scrubbed a hand over his face.
“I think I have a pretty good idea. Mark told me things. Even if they were edited versions.”
“Relating a story without sound effects, smells and their place in the broader picture can give quite a different impression.”
“I suppose there’s nothing like being on the spot to lend a touch of reality.”
“There are some things that will be etched in my memory forever.” A strained expression crossed his face for a moment.
“Do you want to talk about them?”
He shook his head. “No. There’s nothing to be gained from that. I just want to forget.”
“It’s not always easy moving on, is it?”
“No,” he said vaguely, as if his mind roamed elsewhere.
Nic had the distinct impression that there was a lot in Jake’s recent past that burdened him in the present. “Do you have dreams, Jake? I mean, the kind where you think about what you’d like to do with your life if given half a chance?”
Nic looked up at him.
“Sure. Doesn’t everybody?”
“But you’re not everybody. Would you put your life on hold as you know it now, and do something else? Is there something that you want to do as much as the work you do now?”
He was silent for a moment before answering. “Yes. I haven’t thought about it in a while.”
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