by Amy Andrews
‘I won’t be late, Helen,’ Patrick said as he passed the kitchen, where she was making herself a cup of tea.
‘Okay,’ she said without turning. Not that Patrick would have noticed anyway. His butterflies had taken flight and disappeared as the feel of Miranda’s hand in his had instantly soothed his nerves.
Fifteen minutes later they were seated at the à la carte restaurant, looking at their menus. Light piano music tinkled discreetly in the background. Miranda ordered the risotto, Patrick the fish.
‘No entrée?’ he asked.
She shook her head. ‘Dessert.’
‘Ah, a sweet tooth?’
‘What can I say? I was raised on cupcakes.’
Patrick chuckled as the waiter departed. ‘Did your grandmother raise you?’
Miranda laughed. It appeared they weren’t going to start with the pleasantries. ‘Kind of. I spent a lot of time there growing up when my mother...’
Patrick waited for her to elaborate. She seemed to be choosing her words carefully, her gaze troubled. ‘Your mother?’ he prompted. ‘She wasn’t around?’
Miranda took a deep breath. This was the kind of thing people on dates talked about, she supposed, but it wasn’t something she ever really talked about. ‘My mother was around physically...but she had a...tempestuous relationship with my father that was...unusual and...took up a lot of mental...space.’
Patrick frowned. ‘Unusual?’
Miranda sighed. If she and Patrick were going to have a relationship, he deserved more than vague references.
‘She was his mistress. The other woman. His good-time girl. The whole boss and secretary cliché. On again, off again. With his wife. With my mother. Up then down. Moving in. Moving out. Getting divorced. Not getting divorced. Promises. Broken promises...a lot of generally unsavoury angst.’
Suddenly Miranda’s virulent disgust at finding out his marital status was making a lot more sense to Patrick. No wonder she’d been mortified to discover she’d slept with a married man. ‘And where did you fit into it all?’
Miranda shrugged. ‘Nowhere really. He tolerated me when they were together, ignored me when they were apart. The same way he treated Mum, really. I think he resented me because I was proof of his dirty little secret.’
Patrick reached across the table and put his hand on hers. ‘I’m sorry. That sounds awful.’
Miranda felt everything tingle again as his warmth and kindness reached right inside her bones. She turned her hand over and he automatically interlocked his fingers with hers. She gave him her best qué será será smile.
‘I had Nan as a fallback. But...’ Miranda thought back to her teens ‘...I’m afraid I rather let her down there for a while.’
Patrick squeezed her hand. ‘She doesn’t look let down to me.’
Miranda smiled at the truth of it. ‘No.’
‘So...where’s your mum now? Do you have a relationship with your father?’
‘He resettled in New Zealand a few years ago and my mother followed, still hoping... I don’t see a lot of them really. Frankly, I can do without the continuing drama. And so can Lola.’
Patrick didn’t blame her. But still he marvelled at how mature and reasonable she sounded for her age. And he realised for the first time that her age had become a non-issue. She looked gorgeous and sexy, her big silver hoop earrings brushing her neck in the exact spot he was dying to kiss, and he had an overwhelming urge to take care of her.
It was patently obvious she didn’t need him or anyone else to take care of her. But he wanted to anyway.
The waiter came with their drinks and Miranda withdrew her hand, feeling suddenly self-conscious. There was a big, dangerous feeling inside her, swelling and swelling like a balloon being inflated, and when he looked at her like that, like he never wanted to let her go, it only got bigger.
And she’d never felt like this before.
She didn’t know whether to run away screaming or welcome it with open arms.
He lifted his glass to her and she matched his gesture. ‘To us,’ he said.
Miranda felt the balloon fill a little more. ‘To us.’
Why did things have to be so complicated?
It was time to lay her cards on the table. If there was ever going to be an ‘us’ she needed to go into it with some ground rules. It might be a little heavy for a first date but there wouldn’t be any point having a second if they couldn’t talk about the unique issues facing them.
She’d seen her mother’s hopes continually crushed because she’d been too scared to ask for what she needed, and she wouldn’t let it happen to her. Or Lola.
‘Uh-oh,’ Patrick joked as he watched her face grow serious. ‘Something tells me you’re thinking too much.’
Miranda took a deep breath. ‘Can I ask you why you’ve never got a divorce?’
It was something she’d pondered for a while now but hadn’t considered it her business. But if he was going to make good on those promises in his eyes, then for damn sure it was about to be her business.
Best to get it out now.
Thanks to years of listening to her mother’s rants she knew more about divorce law than a lot of lawyers. You didn’t need both parties to agree to a divorce these days. All you needed was a separation. And Patrick had that in spades.
Patrick placed his drink carefully on the table as the hard-hitting question socked him right between the eyes. He couldn’t believe she’d brought this topic up not long after he’d had the same conversation with Helen.
‘I...don’t know, to be honest.’ He played with the frost beading the outside of his glass. ‘For a while part of me hoped, wondered, dreamed that Katie would come back and we’d be a family again. That Ruby would have her mother back.’
He looked up at her. ‘Then time passed and I was busy with Ruby and work and life and it became a matter of timing. Of doing it when she came back because it seemed cowardly to do it in absentia. And then some more time went by and my marital status has been a kind of a security blanket, if anything, and suddenly it’s five years later...’
Miranda nodded. God knew, she understood how time passed in a blur when your child was young. But, still, she had to start as she meant to go on. ‘I’m not going to get involved with a married man.’
Patrick nodded. Given what she’d just told him, he understood perfectly. There was a candle in the middle of the table and there was a flickering glow all over her face, her eyelashes forming shadows on her cheeks. ‘It’s just...not easy with Helen. Funnily enough, I mentioned the D word to her just before you arrived and...well...let’s just say it’s probably going to take her a little while to get used to—’
‘Helen?’ Miranda frowned as she interrupted. ‘Your nanny has some kind of investment in whether you divorce or not?’
Patrick blinked. She didn’t know? ‘Helen is my mother-in-law.’
His mother-in-law? Katie’s mother? Miranda wondered for a moment if she’d misheard but he was looking at her so openly she knew she hadn’t. A sudden swell of anger rose in her chest. ‘You don’t think you could have told me that?’
Patrick frowned. ‘I thought you knew.’
Miranda racked her brains, trying to find the time he’d told her that vital piece of information but couldn’t. She’d heard Ruby talk about her grandmother quite a bit but she just hadn’t made the connection. And this afternoon she’d merely introduced herself as Helen.
‘No. But it certainly explains Helen’s rather cool greeting this evening. Especially when I rocked up just after you mentioned divorcing her daughter.’
‘Helen was cool with you?’
‘Oh, yeah.’ She nodded.
‘That doesn’t sound like her.’
An old itch, one she hadn’t felt in a long time, crawled up her spine.
Her father had done that when he’d been defending his wife against some accusation made by her mother.
He’d sucked at trying to keep two women in check.
Miranda raised her glass to her mouth and made sure he was looking right at her before she said, ‘She was cool.’
He nodded as he watched her glossy lips close around her straw. ‘I’ll talk to her about it.’
Miranda almost choked on her drink. ‘What?’ she gasped as she replaced the drink with a clatter on the table. The last thing she wanted was to make trouble.
‘You’re important to me, Miranda. I don’t want her treating you like a pariah because of a whole bunch of stuff that happened five years ago that wasn’t your fault and over which you had no control.’
Miranda was touched by his defence of her but a part of her sympathised with Helen, just as part of her had always sympathised with her father’s wife. She was moving in on claimed territory—it was up to her to tread carefully.
‘Patrick, of course she’s going to feel some animosity towards me. She’s probably spent the last five years harbouring reunion fantasies in her head and now here I am, threatening that and her place in your family. Do not say a word to her.’
She reached out her hand this time and touched his.
‘Let’s just give her some time, okay? I’m sure she doesn’t want you to be alone for the rest of your life.’
Patrick smiled and then shook his head and broke into a chuckle.
‘What?’ she asked, eyeing him dubiously but smiling anyway because his low, sexy laughter was contagious.
‘You,’ he said. ‘You are wise beyond your years, do you know that?’
‘Oh, don’t,’ she groaned. ‘Don’t make me feel any more ancient than I do. I’m rather afraid I’m not some fun, peppy, energetic twenty-two-year-old who’s up for anything. Especially on a school night.’
Miranda didn’t often feel like she’d missed out on those crazy teen years—mostly she was just too tired to think about it. But occasionally she did wonder how her life would have turned out if she hadn’t been pregnant at seventeen.
Patrick laughed at her joke but sobered quickly. ‘I’ve had young and peppy. Trust me, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.’
They gazed at each other for a long moment, both reflecting on what they’d experienced in the past and knowing somehow that they were embarking on something so much better.
‘The risotto for the lady?’ the oblivious waiter asked, interrupting their moment.
Patrick nodded, dragging his gaze away. ‘Yes, thank you.’
They ate their meal sticking to safer topics about the food and the restaurant. As they finished and the waiter took their plates the conversation moved to the gossip at work that had already begun to circulate about them, especially now Patrick had confessed to Lilly that not only was he separated but he was the Dr Costello who’d been briefly accused of murdering his wife five years ago.
Patrick shook his head. ‘Hospitals are the same wherever you go. All about the gossip. I’m sorry you’re going to get caught up in the fallout.’
Miranda laughed. ‘My mother was a mistress. Trust me, I’m pretty familiar with gossip.’ She thought back to some of the things the kids at school had said, which had only added to the general unhappiness of her childhood. ‘I bounced back from that, I’m sure I’ll weather this too. Don’t worry about me. I bounce. I’m a survivor.’
Patrick arched an eyebrow. ‘And if things don’t work out between us? Will you bounce back from that too?’ It didn’t bear thinking about but it was a possibility. Something they had to talk about before they went down the track he was being tugged down by a power he didn’t understand.
Miranda doubted it. There was a whole well of emotions inside her already associated with him. She hadn’t wanted to get too close, examine them in any detail for the exact reason he’d just given. ‘I don’t know,’ she said honestly. ‘Neil I could survive but you...’
Patrick quirked an eyebrow. ‘Wait... Neil?’
Miranda faltered. The name had slipped out without thought. ‘Neil was a guy I lived with for about six months when Lola was two.’
Patrick sat back in his chair, surprised. ‘Oh. I didn’t realise there’d been anyone else.’
Miranda nodded. ‘We were nineteen. He was a fellow student nurse. He was funny and Lola adored him and I think I wanted to give her a normal family life so desperately I didn’t see any issues with involving him in our lives. And he was great with Lols and he fitted right in. But...’
Miranda looked at him watching her, his olive complexion accentuated by the low light. ‘He was nineteen. The glow of family life eventually dimmed. He tried hard, I know that and I don’t blame him for wanting to have some fun and live a little, but I couldn’t. I had responsibilities. I couldn’t go out to clubs all night. Or drop everything for some party.’
‘So he left?’
Miranda nodded. ‘Eventually. And I understood that.’
‘You weren’t angry or upset?’
Miranda gazed into the candle. ‘I was upset about it, of course, but...not devastated. Lola, on the other hand...’
Miranda shuddered just thinking about how distraught her daughter had been when Neil had walked out. She raised her eyes to his. ‘I was naïve. I thought it would be fine to bring someone into her life like that. I can’t be that naïve again, Patrick. I can’t enter into a relationship and have it just be about me. I need to be cautious. I need to be sure. And so do you.’
Patrick nodded. He knew exactly what she meant. The stakes were high and they were both aware of the consequences. But he’d never been surer. ‘I am.’
‘Then you need to get a divorce.’
She hated the way her quiet statement was haunted with the echoes from her childhood. How she sounded like her mother demanding over and over that her father divorce his wife. But she wasn’t demanding, she was asking. And she was only going to ask once.
He nodded. ‘I know.’
Their gazes locked and the sincerity in his eyes was breathtaking. Miranda felt it down to her bones.
The oblivious waiter returned, breaking the spell. ‘Dessert?’
* * *
They drove home in silence half an hour later and in the confines of the car Miranda had never been more aware of him. Her peripheral vision was full of him. His strong thigh, the rise and fall of his chest, his spicy scent with that lingering sweetness intoxicating her senses until she was almost dizzy with wanting to bury her face in his neck and inhale.
Her breath was thick in her lungs and it stuttered into the laden air like heavy fog.
Patrick glanced at her. ‘Stop,’ he said.
She swallowed at the hunger she saw in his gaze. ‘Stop what?’
He looked back at the road, his hand gripping the gear stick hard because if he let go it would be on her knee. Then it would be under her skirt. And then, God help him, he’d be screeching the car to the side of the road. ‘Stop thinking what you’re thinking.’
Miranda didn’t ask how he knew what she was thinking because she had a feeling they were on the same wavelength. She just dragged her eyes off him, her heart pounding, and resolutely turned to look out her window.
He pulled up in his double driveway next to her car ten minutes later. Neither of them moved. But within seconds steamy thoughts had led to hot breaths that started to fog the inside of the car.
Patrick turned to face her. ‘I meant what I said. I want to do this differently this time around. The first time...ending up in bed so soon... If we’re going to get this right, we need to take it slower.’ His gaze drifted to the pulse fluttering at the base of her throat. ‘I think we should date a little first, really get to know each other before we take it to an...’ her chest rose and fell, stretching the fabric of
her dress in interesting ways ‘...intimate level.’
Although that horse had already bolted, Miranda understood his reasoning. She nodded, wishing he wouldn’t look at her like he wanted to tear her dress off and that the word ‘intimate’ hadn’t put a whole bunch of pictures in her head.
‘Good idea,’ she said, and cleared her throat of the ridiculous wobble it seemed to be suddenly plagued with.
Patrick felt his loins heat at the low, throaty lilt to her voice. His eyes roved over her face. There was colour in her cheeks. And her mouth... He looked away from her mouth, concentrated on the steering-wheel.
‘And we should definitely keep it from the girls. We need to be sure ourselves first.’
Miranda nodded vigorously. ‘Agreed.’ Definitely. They absolutely needed to be sure before the girls became involved.
Her gaze fanned over his neck, where his open collar brushed a pulse bounding to a steady beat. The urge to press her lips there, to taste the heat and the sweetness of him, rocked through her and she dropped her gaze.
To his thigh. His solid, virile thigh. That had pressed her to a mattress and draped over her, imprisoning her in his arms.
She dragged her gaze up and their eyes met. She swallowed as her pulse beat a desperate tempo through her blood. ‘So what’s next?’ she asked in that annoying alto again.
Patrick drew in a ragged breath at the desire smoking her gaze to a sizzle. ‘Clandestine dating.’ He looked at her mouth again. So soft, so tempting. ‘No sex.’
Miranda rode a surge of thwarted desire. He smelled so good and she just wanted a tiny, tiny taste of him. Something to get her through. What if they never got to the intimacy level? What if after a few dates it was just too hard and they decided to drop it?
She shut her eyes briefly to dispel the terrible thought. ‘Right. Agreed,’ she said. ‘We date. No sex. Technically you’re still married and we need to take it slowly. Be sure. For us and the girls.’
‘Agreed,’ he said, dragging his gaze from her mouth. ‘Dating only. No...sex.’