by Amy Andrews
CHAPTER NINE
HELEN woke at seven-thirty the next morning to an empty bed. She still felt exhausted but in a good way. Not weary any more just deeply, deeply sated. James had made love to her again after their first frenzied session. It had been slow and thorough, he had savoured her as he had promised, and she had cried all over again from the sheer beauty of it. And then he had kissed away her tears and they’d fallen asleep together.
She could smell his scent on her sheets, on her pillow, and she knew she wouldn’t wash them until it was completely gone. She could also smell coffee. Divine and rich, its earthy fragrance wafting in through her bedroom door. She stretched and felt the protest of internal muscles and blushed, thinking about her aggression.
She lay there for a while, her stomach growling as the aroma of coffee continued to tease her taste buds, her thoughts drifting to James. Was he out there, freaking out? She imagined him pacing, feeling trapped, rehearsing his you-know-I’m-a-gypsy and we-should-just-be-friends speech. She smiled, giving herself a few more minutes before she put him out of his misery.
He was sitting in a lounge chair in his trousers from last night, no shirt, flicking through her albums. He was sipping coffee and for a few seconds she just drank in the sight of him. He looked magnificent. Her toes curled, thinking about the things he had done to her body, the things she’d done to his.
‘Hey,’ she said.
James looked up. She was standing in the entrance to the room dressed in his shirt. She’d only done up a couple of buttons and he caught a glimpse of creamy breasts, cute belly button and black lacy knickers. Her hair tumbled in disorder, framing her gorgeous face.
His still unsigned contract sat on the coffee-table on top of the pile of albums, taunting him. Seeing her like this, all tousled from bed and his love-making, to sign it seemed like a really stupid idea. He wanted nothing more than to take her hand and spend all day in bed. But he didn’t stay. He didn’t know how to stay.
‘Hey.’
They gazed at each other for a few moments. No words, just hungry looks that throbbed with yearning, desire and lust.
‘Coffee smells good,’ she said, her voice husky.
‘I’ll get you a cup.’
He pushed up out of the chair, grateful for something to do other than stare like a horny teenager. His shirt had never looked so damn good.
When he turned around to bring her cup back out to the lounge room she was leaning against the kitchen doorframe. She advanced towards him, her hand extended, and he passed her the mug. She put it down on the bench and pushed herself up and back until she was sitting on the bench beside it.
He remembered how they had shared their first kiss with her sitting on the bench. His gaze zoned in on the generous display of left breast he could now see, including the rosy tip. Dragging his gaze away, it fell to her thighs where the shirt had ridden up to reveal every silky inch. God, she was too underdressed to be sitting like that.
‘So,’ she said, admiring the muscular definition of his chest. The dainty St Christopher sat in the hollow at the base of his neck.
‘So.’ He leant against the sink and nodded.
‘Are you freaking out about last night?’
That was putting it mildly. ‘A little. Are you?’
Helen smiled. ‘No.’
James admired her aura of calm. ‘O-K.’
‘I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, Oh, my God, I took advantage of her in an emotional state, it’s not a very honourable thing to do and in the cold light of morning she’s going to be upset about it.’ She raised an eyebrow at him.
The curve of her breast taunted him, even though he was trying really hard to be a gentleman and not look.
‘Something like that.’
‘Do I look upset?’
She looked as sexy as hell. She looked like she’d been made love to all night. She looked up for more. ‘Not really.’
Helen smiled. ‘Right. So get over it. I asked you to do it. In fact, if I remember correctly, I was pretty damn adamant.’ She grinned at his grudging smile. ‘And it was great. It was just what I needed. So let’s just leave it at that. A one-off night that was a great way to end a terrible day.’
He had three weeks left and she really thought that after last night they could live in the same house and not want to repeat the experience? He already wanted her again.
‘Really, you shouldn’t tell me this is a one-off when you’re barely wearing my shirt. In fact, I think we’re both a little underdressed for this conversation.’
She grinned at him impishly. ‘Do you want it back?’
She was having way too much fun with this. He needed to take back some control here. ‘No,’ he said, crossing to her, stepping between her thighs, forcing them to part, and reaching for the buttons. He did them all up. Even the top one. ‘That’s better.’ He picked up his mug and headed out of the kitchen.
Helen laughed. ‘Speak for yourself.’
She kicked off the bench and followed him, carrying her mug. He was looking through her albums again. She sat opposite him. He was right. If she was trying to convince him this was a one-off then she needed to behave. But she couldn’t remember ever feeling this…light. Her weeping last night had purged years’ of heartache and it felt good to have it gone.
‘You never told me you’d travelled so much.’
She shrugged ‘You never asked. In fact, I think you just assumed because I’d lived in Skye all my life that I’d never been anywhere else.’
James nodded. It was true. He had judged her. ‘Guilty as charged. I’m sorry.’
‘You’re forgiven.’ After last night she’d have forgiven him almost anything. ‘I guess I inherited a healthy dose of my father’s genes.’
He gazed at a photo of a younger Helen, the Eiffel Tower in the background. ‘What’s your favourite place?’
‘Venice.’
He laughed. ‘You don’t need to think about it?’
She shook her head. ‘Nope. There’s something special about Venice.’
‘Yes,’ he agreed, ‘there is.’
James flicked through the albums a bit more, the silence between them companionable. Last night had certainly muddied the waters for him. Leaving Skye had become more of a conundrum then it should have been. His wild gypsy soul was calling him on but he knew, like Venice, Helen was special. That there was something special between them. That he wanted to explore what it was. He definitely didn’t want to walk away from her.
‘Helen…’
She looked up from the fascinating contents of her mug into his serious face. ‘James.’
‘About last night.’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m not sure I can live under the same roof and ignore the fact that we had a really incredible night together. Every time I see you I’m going to want to do it again.’
Amen to that. But Helen knew the only way she could wave him goodbye at the end of three weeks and not hang onto his leg as he left like a petulant child was to go cold turkey with the sex.
She shrugged. ‘Think of it as a one-night stand. You have had those, haven’t you?’
James smiled. ‘I’ve had a couple.’
‘There you go. We had a one-night stand. There’s no follow-through required.’
James stared at her. Was she for real? His erection was almost painful. ‘I don’t usually see the one-night standee every day, though.’
Helen shrugged again, hoping she looked more nonchalant then she felt. ‘We’ll manage.’
He raised his eyebrows at her. ‘I want you again. Right now.’
Helen felt heat slam into her and it took a few moments to regain the power of speech. ‘Look. You’re leaving in three weeks. And that’s fine. Believe me, if anyone knows about the gypsy soul, it’s me. I will stand at this door and wave you goodbye and wish you a good life. But if we spend the next three weeks doing what we did last night, I can’t promise I’ll be able to do that. If my fathe
r leaving last night taught me anything, it’s not to settle for less. I will cling. I may cry. I will definitely ask you to stay.’
And I don’t want to ask you. I want you to want to.
‘Trust me, it will be messy. I’m trying to be mature about this, James. Work with me.’
‘What if you came with me?’
Helen froze, her coffee-mug halfway to her mouth. She placed it slowly back on the coffee-table. ‘Why?’
‘There’s something between us, Helen. I don’t want to have to say goodbye. I want to be with you. Don’t you feel it, too?’
She nodded. ‘And yet I haven’t asked you to stay. Haven’t asked you to do something I know you wouldn’t want to do.’
He thrust the photo album on his lap at her. ‘I’m not asking you to do something you don’t like. You’re a traveller, too, Helen. There’s gypsy in you. And with Elsie gone, there’s nothing holding you in Skye.’
Helen couldn’t believe she’d heard him say that. She felt disappointed and angry. Hadn’t he been around her long enough to know her? To sense her connection to Skye was about more than a sense of obligation to Elsie? No, he was looking at her blankly, obviously not getting what she was about at all.
But, then, gypsies never did understand the concept of home and what it meant. Her father certainly never had. Her roots were here. Her memories were here. Her soul was here. Yes, she’d travelled. But she liked being grounded and there was no place like home.
‘There’s never been anything holding me in Skye, James. I choose to stay here.’
He could tell he’d hit a nerve. She was sitting very straight, the sin that had heated the amber flecks in her eyes moments ago frozen out by the rapidly cooling jade. ‘So you’re just going to live here…for ever?’
She heard the note of incredulity in his voice. That was why it was good he only had three weeks left. Why she’d never ask him to stay. She couldn’t live with a man who didn’t understand her and always had one eye on the highway out of town. ‘Yes. Is that so hard to comprehend?’
For someone who had spent the last five years of his life on his bike or on a plane, or on some kind of transport heading somewhere, yes. ‘I guess I just don’t understand the urge to be grounded.’
Which wasn’t exactly true. Since coming to Skye he’d felt the most grounded he’d ever been, like he’d found the elusive something he’d been looking for all his life. And as tempting as it was to blame it on the enforced captivity of his broken leg, he knew that was a cop-out. He knew there was something about Helen that grounded him. But he also knew he couldn’t give her the things that she deserved.
‘You know, life doesn’t have to be one or the other, James. You can have the best of both worlds.’
He blinked at the flint in her voice. ‘No, Helen, I can’t. I chose the gypsy life because I don’t have to be beholden to anyone or any place. I grew up trapped in an unhappy house. Powerless to get out. I’m never going to be trapped again.’
Helen stood. She looked down at him, feeling dismay. ‘Look, you want to roam around the country for ever, then good luck to you. You want to become Owen then more power to you. There are worse people out there—’
‘I’m not sure about that, Helen,’ James interrupted. ‘What he did last night was unforgivable. I want to hunt him down and kill him and I barely know him. But you’re wrong, I don’t want to be him. I’ll not repeat his mistakes or my parents’. Which is why it’s better to keep moving.’
Helen felt tears prick at her eyes. She felt foolishly moved by James’s obvious distaste for Owen’s disappearing act but she was angry at him, too. He was selling them short.
Fighting with him now, trying to make him see, she knew that she loved him. That she wanted him to stay. It was a really bad time for such a momentous realisation, but her whole body hummed with it.
And it just made this argument even more necessary.
Deep down she knew that they could have a good life together. Things could work and work well because they both had experience to draw on and a determination not to repeat the mistakes of their childhood. Elsie was gone and her father was always going to be a transient figure her in life. But James could be her family. And she could be his. She could make him see that not all relationships were unhappy.
‘So you’re just going to roam the rest of your life?’
James shrugged. ‘Sure.’
‘Because you’re too scared to stay in one place and give it a try? That’s insane, James.’
‘I haven’t been equipped to nurture a successful relationship. My upbringing didn’t teach me how to give emotionally.’
‘You did all right with me last night.’
‘That’s not the same thing, Helen, and you know it.’
‘All I know for sure is that you’ll never find whatever the hell it is you’re looking for until you stop running, James. Do you even know what it is any more?’
Good question. He’d thought he knew but looking at her in his shirt, questioning him, calling him on his beliefs, she was right. What did he want? He’d got away from the sadness of his earlier life but was he any happier? Didn’t he want to be happy? To be loved and feel needed? All the things he hadn’t had in his younger years.
But what if he stuffed up? What if it didn’t work out and he was stuck in Skye in a relationship that was just plain awful? His feelings for Helen were too complicated and, frankly, they scared him. He’d never met a woman who scared him this much.
Helen was someone who would demand everything from him and he’d been too used to keeping a part of himself back, wary from years of emotional neglect, of not having his feelings returned. It was easier to move on than risk his heart again.
‘It’s a good life,’ he said defensively, as his head roared with conflicting emotions.
‘Have you ever thought maybe there’s a flipside to your gypsy life that’s just as good?’
He’d more than thought it. He’d been living the flipside here in this cottage in Skye with her, and he’d liked it more than he cared to admit.
‘I’d hate to stuff up, Helen. I’d hate to hurt you. My past is never far away.’
‘Neither is mine, James, but we can’t go on like this, forever frightened to live and love and be happy because of what happened decades ago. You know there have been times when I’ve resented Owen so much. Wished for a proper father, one who was around all the time. I’ve been disappointed in him and his gypsy lifestyle and his inability to just stay put for a while. But I can’t let it—let him—stop me from taking a chance. And you shouldn’t let your past mess up a shot at a future either.’
‘You don’t know how it was,’ he said quietly.
‘No. Not exactly. But I know it made you sad and that children shouldn’t be sad. You had a lousy family.’ She shrugged. ‘Guess what? So did I. So let’s start again. Let’s make our own family. Let me be your family.’
James was tempted. Staying here, wrapped up in Helen’s arms for ever? Could it be that simple? ‘I don’t know, Helen.’
She stared at him for a few minutes as her heart broke. If he didn’t know, she was damned if she was going to keep pushing. He had to want this, too. She wasn’t going to put her soul on the line, confess her love when he obviously didn’t reciprocate. When he still didn’t know what he wanted out of life. Because she did know—now. She wanted him.
Helen picked up a pen that was on the coffee-table. ‘Then sign the contract,’ she said, passing him the pen. ‘There’s nothing keeping you here.’
And she turned on her heel and stalked into her bedroom before she crumbled in front of him. Her watery eyes scanned the rumpled bed and she just wanted to throw herself on it and cry. No! She’d cried enough last night for the rest of her life. No more tears.
James stared after her, pen in hand. How quickly their night of passion and their morning of flirting had vanished when faced with the realities of their very different lifestyles. His gaze fell on the contract. She’
d painted an attractive picture but he just couldn’t visualise how it would work. She deserved to be with someone who could love her with an open heart. Who could see the picture. Who knew how to make it work.
He picked up a pen and signed on the dotted line. She’d thank him for this in the long run.
Courteous was the best way to describe the remaining three weeks of James’s locum period. They were polite but distant. A bit like they’d been when their attraction had first flared and she had made it clear that it wasn’t going to happen. But it was bleaker than that. He got the impression Helen was marking the days on a calendar.
One with his picture on it.
And a target drawn in felt pen on his head.
He’d tried to approach her the first few days after their argument, tried to explain, but she’d just looked straight through him and said, ‘I think we’ve been over this.’
His body, of course, betrayed him at every turn so her aloofness was a good reminder that they were too different to make things work. The more his body ached for her, the more he craved the open road.
The residents of Skye threw him a farewell party at the CWA hall on his last day of work. Everyone was there. Even Helen. She was tense, her smile forced, but she was there. Alf gave a speech and Josh had made him a poster that said ‘Best Doctor in Skye.’
‘Are you sure we can’t tempt you to stay?’ Genevieve asked, rocking a sleeping William as the party flowed around them. ‘I don’t mind staying on maternity leave. It’s going to break my heart to leave him.’
James looked at her guiltily. Looked at the baby he had helped into the world. Looked all around him at the people who had wormed their way into his life with their big hearts and welcoming arms. Each one of them anchored him here.
Maybe he should have checked with Genevieve first. He could have offered to do another four-month stint. But the way things were now with Helen he was relieved to be going. And the road was beckoning him. ‘Sorry. I have to be at my next job in a week.’
‘That’s a shame,’ Genevieve mused. ‘I kinda thought you and Helen might have…’
James’s gaze settled on Helen. She was laughing at something someone was saying. She looked warm and relaxed, so not how she’d been with him, and he found himself yearning for that Helen. ‘Ah, no.’