by Emily Forbes
She found her feet and stepped away, forcing him to drop his arm, and then she found herself missing the contact.
What was the matter with her? she chided herself. She was a grown woman, in a relationship with another man. It was ridiculous to let a schoolgirl crush from a dozen years ago affect her like this.
But she couldn’t help but wonder what it meant that Ryder’s touch could still make her buzz when Craig’s touch had never set her pulse racing, had never made her skin feel like it was on fire. But was that Craig’s fault or hers?
She knew she deliberately sought out relationships that weren’t based on an overpowering sense of physical desire. She didn’t want a relationship that created huge emotional fluctuations for her. She chose calm and measured deliberately. It made her feel safe. She had chosen Craig because he had been able to give her the things she’d needed at the time. Was it his fault that what she had needed had been a place to call home more than a person to share it with? Was it Craig’s fault that she didn’t want to fall in love?
Her experience with Ryder had taught her that.
Falling in love had left her exposed and vulnerable. Now she didn’t want to be emotionally dependent on someone. She didn’t want to be needy. She didn’t want to rely on anyone but herself.
Ryder had been her first love. Her only love. She’d tried to convince herself it had been nothing but a teenage crush but she’d known she was lying to herself. Falling in love had left her feeling foolish and rejected. He’d broken her heart and she’d vowed not to let herself fall in love again. And she’d kept her word.
But now, twelve years later, her head and her heart were sending conflicting messages. One touch, one smile and she was transported back to her teenage years when Ryder had been her world. When she’d thought he’d been the answer to her prayers. When he’d been the shining star in her small galaxy.
‘Hop in, I’ll give you a ride down the beach.’ Even if his muscles were new, his voice was deep and familiar and it brought her out of her reverie and back to the present.
The open-sided lifeguard buggy was parked at the bottom of the stairs and Ryder had walked around to the driver’s side and was sliding into his seat, oblivious to the simmering tension that was coursing through Poppy’s body.
Her head was still spinning, still recovering from his touch. Unable to make decisions of her own, she followed his instructions and clambered into the buggy, stepping over the rescue board that was slotted along the side.
She stared at Ryder, still trying to process the idea that, A: he was here in Bondi, and B: her hormones were going crazy.
‘What?’ he said as she continued to look at him. ‘Have I got something stuck on my face?’ He grinned at her and wiped a hand down his cheek.
‘No.’ Poppy smiled in return. ‘I’m still trying to get my head around the fact that you’re here. Last I heard you were on the other side of the country, in Perth. I wasn’t expecting to see you but you don’t seem surprised to see me.’
‘I’m not,’ he said as he steered the buggy around a group of young girls sunbathing on the sand.
‘You knew I was coming?’
‘Daisy mentioned it.’
‘Daisy did? You’ve seen her?’
‘Of course. I’ve seen her at the beach and I’ve been to dinner a few times with Jet at Lily and Daisy’s.’
She wondered why no one had said anything to her. She knew she tended to get caught up in her own busy life but she was sure no one had mentioned anything. She was certain she would have remembered. Did they assume she wouldn’t be interested?
‘In fact, Jet invited me to dinner tonight too,’ he continued.
‘Are you coming?’ she asked.
Ryder parked the buggy next to one of the yellow signs that the lifeguards had posted on the beach, warning swimmers of the dangerous currents. He shook his head as he hit the kill switch and shut off the engine. ‘No.’
She didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed. ‘Are you busy?’ She fished for more information, even as she tried to tell herself it didn’t matter.
‘No,’ he explained. ‘I thought you should have some time with just the four of you.’
‘Oh.’ Now she knew she was disappointed.
‘Maybe we could have dinner another time. Catch up properly then.’
Her disappointment eased slightly. ‘I’d like that,’ she said as she hopped out of the buggy.
Ryder had always been good company. So often in her childhood she’d felt like she was lost amongst the noise and chaos of her surroundings and she knew she’d developed a boisterous personality in an effort to be seen, to be noticed, but it hadn’t done much good. Their family living arrangements had been unusual, and added to that growing up so close in age to her siblings meant everyone around the Carlson siblings treated them as one entity.
But Ryder hadn’t. He’d always had time for her. He’d always listened to her. She’d struggled to find her own identity but he’d always seemed to see her, to understand her. She’d like to spend time with him. Provided she could get her nerves under control.
‘I’ve got a couple of orientation days scheduled with the ambulance service, starting tomorrow,’ she told him. ‘Once I get my roster sorted, we can sort something out.’
* * *
Poppy smiled at him and then stepped out of her shorts and dropped them on the sand. He tried not to look as she lifted the hem of her T-shirt and pulled it over her head in one smooth movement to reveal a black bikini and toned abdominal muscles. She dropped her T-shirt onto her shorts and walked north along the beach towards the safer stretch of water. Away from the rip. Away from him.
He tried not to stare as she made her way into the water but it was his job to keep an eye on the swimmers and the ocean. He couldn’t help it if she was in his field of vision. He watched her wade into the water, watched her until she dived under a small wave and struck out away from the beach.
He turned his attention back to the rest of the ocean, keeping an eye on the swimmers who weren’t as confident in the water but he kept her in the periphery of his vision as his mind stayed focussed on her.
She was still gorgeous. Long, toned, athletic limbs, big, green eyes that seemed to hold the secrets of the universe, thick, blonde hair that fell in waves past her shoulders and perfect heart-shaped lips. Thinking about her lips reminded him of their kiss. In truth, he’d never forgotten it.
He’d been a lanky, gawky seventeen-year-old virgin. He’d had a couple of girlfriends, nothing serious, but Poppy had captivated him. Since the age of fifteen he’d had a thing for her but he’d never been confident enough to tell her so.
And then, out of the blue, she had kissed him.
He had no idea who she had kissed before him but it had been an amazing kiss. Like nothing he’d ever experienced. It had been incredible and unexpected.
They had spent a lot of time together over the years. He’d turned up often at the Carlson house under the guise of being Jet’s best friend, but Poppy had been the real attraction. But she’d never given any sign that she was interested in him as anything other than a friend.
Until she’d kissed him.
And there’d only been one problem. She’d just been saying goodbye. His family had been moving away, four thousand kilometres away to the opposite side of the country. Poppy had hugged him first. She’d wrapped her slim arms around his even skinnier shoulders and told him she would miss him.
He’d said nothing. He’d been a teenage boy—he hadn’t had the right words—and even if he had, the feeling of her embrace had left him speechless.
And then she’d kissed him and wiped all coherent thought from his young mind.
He’d been working on the courage to ask her out, finally deciding he needed to take the chance, before his world had imploded and the opportunity had been torn away
from him by his mother’s decision to pack up and move across the country. He’d figured he could have lived with that. It would have been a case of not knowing what he was missing but after she’d kissed him, after he’d had a taste of her, he’d known he would always rue the missed opportunity.
He hadn’t wanted to leave. He hadn’t wanted to leave her. But he’d had no choice. He’d had no valid reason to stay and his mother and his sister had needed him. Even as a teenage boy in love he’d been able to see that he had to go. Overnight he had become the man of the house and he’d had to do the right thing by his family. Especially considering that his father hadn’t.
Eventually he’d got over the move. He’d got over the fact that he felt as if he’d been torn from Poppy’s arms. And he’d got over the fact that his father’s mid-life crisis—which had led him to run off with his much younger girlfriend—had instigated the change in his own circumstances. He’d even got over his parents’ divorce, and eventually he’d got over the kiss too, but he’d never forgotten it.
He’d agonised over writing to Poppy, but he hadn’t been any good with words. He’d been a seventeen-year-old boy who’d had no idea how to express what he’d been feeling, how she had made him feel, and so he’d said nothing, written nothing, and eventually the days had turned into weeks, which had turned into months, and all his thoughts had remained unspoken. And then it had been too late.
It had been the first kiss he’d had that had felt like it had had some meaning behind it, something shared, something emotional, rather than just something physical. It had become a moment in time, a moment in his history that had shaped him, and a moment he’d thought he’d put behind him, but now he was wondering what it would be like to kiss her again.
It was unlikely that he’d get that opportunity. He knew she had a partner, but it didn’t mean he couldn’t imagine what it would be like.
He kept his eyes on the water but his gaze kept drifting back to where Poppy was swimming.
He hadn’t been surprised to see her as he’d been expecting her, but what he hadn’t expected had been the sudden jolt of awareness when he’d seen her standing in the tower. He’d had the unsettling sensation of having the air knocked out of him. His pulse had been racing and it had felt as though his heart had suddenly got too big for his chest and had squeezed the air out of his lungs to make more room. He’d smiled and said hello and hoped he hadn’t still sounded like the naïve, shy, tongue-tied teenager he’d been when he’d last seen her. But he suspected that he had.
She had become part of his past and he’d thought he’d got over her but seeing her again made it clear that there was still a connection. On his part at least.
He couldn’t deny it was good to see her. Her clear green eyes still sparkled intensely, and when she looked at him, he felt as if he was the only person she was interested in seeing. He wondered if she made everyone feel that way.
Her smile still made the day brighter and her golden blonde hair still begged to be wound around his fingers. But, of course, he’d never done that. He’d never had the courage.
And he wouldn’t dare to dream of doing it now either. He figured she’d probably forgotten all about him in the past twelve years and she’d no doubt kissed dozens of boys—men—in that time. She would have moved on and he wasn’t about to remind her of their shared history. That would be far too embarrassing.
He would have liked to have accepted Jet’s invitation to dinner tonight but he’d been uncertain. He’d been unsure if Poppy would want him there but his uncertainty had stemmed more from the fact he’d imagined that her boyfriend would be with her and he hadn’t wanted to deal with that. He’d been prepared for the fact that she would be different from the girl he remembered but he hadn’t been prepared to see her with another man. He’d known it would mess with his memories.
Ryder shook his head as he tried to clear his thoughts. Those memories needed to stay locked away for now—he had a job to do and he couldn’t afford distractions. He swivelled his gaze up and down the shoreline. The beach was starting to empty as families went home for dinner and to prepare for the week ahead, but his attention was diverted by a woman who wasn’t heading for the promenade but was hurrying towards him. By her side was a young boy who was holding a beach towel against his head.
‘Can you have a look at my son, please? He collided with a boogie-boarder. He got a knee to the head and he has a cut by his eye.’
‘Okay.’ Ryder squatted down in the sand. ‘Keep holding that towel there for a minute,’ he said as it looked like the mother was about to move her son’s hand. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Jackson.’
‘All right, Jackson, I’ll just ask you a couple of questions and then I’ll have a look at your battle wounds.’ The boy had walked up to Ryder so he didn’t appear to have sustained a spinal injury but Ryder would do a quick check just for his own peace of mind. He knew that one of the lifeguards had sustained a fractured thoracic vertebra in a collision in the water and it had gone undetected for a couple of days.
‘Have you got any pain anywhere else?’
‘No.’
‘Any tingling or numbness in your fingers or toes?’
Jackson wriggled his toes in the sand. ‘No.’
‘Take a deep breath for me.’ The boy closed his eyes as he followed Ryder’s instructions, making Ryder concerned. ‘How does that feel?’
‘I feel a bit dizzy.’
Ryder knew that could be shock or concussion. ‘All right, let’s put you up here on the back of the buggy and I’ll have a look.’ He unzipped the first-aid kit while he was talking and then lifted the boy up onto the tray of the ATV before pulling on a pair of surgical gloves. He opened a packet of gauze and a vial of saline.
‘Can you take the towel?’ he asked Jackson’s mother.
Once the wound was exposed Ryder poured saline over the side of the boy’s head to wash away the blood. Head wounds always bled a lot and often looked far worse than they actually were, but this cut had split the skin from the corner of Jackson’s left eye halfway to his temple. There was a bruise forming already. He’d been knocked hard but the cut wasn’t deep.
Ryder taped a wad of gauze over the wound. ‘I think we’ll take you up to the tower to patch you up properly. You can hop up here with him,’ he told the mother. ‘I’ll drive you back slowly.’
Ryder got Jackson back to the tower and up the stairs. He laid him on the treatment bed and slid the oxygen mask over the boy’s nose and mouth, knowing that would help if he was in shock. He draped a space blanket over him to counteract the heat loss from his wet bathing shorts.
‘Can you tell me what day it is, Jackson?’ Ryder asked as he removed the wad of bloodied gauze.
‘Sunday. Does this mean I can stay home from school tomorrow?’
‘I reckon you deserve a day off,’ Ryder told him. Jackson was going to look battered and bruised by tomorrow and would probably feel pretty tender.
Ryder managed to stem the flow of blood but Jackson was going to need more help than he was qualified to give him in order to close the wound.
‘All right. The cut’s not too deep but I reckon we’ll get the ambos to have a look at it.’ The cut was a couple of centimetres long and being close to the eye Ryder thought it was better to err on the side of caution.
‘Will it need stitches?’ Jackson’s mother asked.
‘I think they’ll be able to glue the edges closed. That will mean no swimming for a week but he can have a quick shower in twenty-four hours.’
‘So he’s okay?’
‘The ambos will do a more thorough check but it seems like he’s come out of this without too much trouble, but if he gets a temperature in the next day or has any nausea or dizziness you’ll need to take him to your local doctor.’
‘Okay, thank you.’
Jet called the ambulance
for the second time that day and Ryder left his patient in the care of the lifeguards in the tower. He needed to get back out onto the sand as it was time to start packing up.
The beach was patrolled from six in the morning until seven at night. The lifeguards worked staggered shifts with a maximum of eight on at a time, but because it wasn’t yet peak season more than half had finished work, leaving skeleton staff to close the beach at the end of the day.
Ryder took the buggy and drove along the sand, pulling up the yellow warning signs, picking up cones and bringing in the flags. He pulled out the dangerous-current sign where Poppy had left her clothes.
Her clothes were gone.
He checked the beach but she was nowhere to be seen.
She hadn’t said goodbye but, then, why would she? He consoled himself with the knowledge that at least it wouldn’t be another twelve years until he saw her again.
* * *
Poppy towelled herself dry after a quick shower. The house had been empty when she’d got back from the beach but she could hear noise coming from the kitchen and she knew at least one of her sisters was home from the hospital. She rifled through her bag and found some clean underwear and a light cotton sundress. She got dressed and headed for the kitchen.
Her little sister, Daisy, was sliding a tray into the oven as Poppy walked in. She had her back to Poppy but when she straightened and turned, she had a big smile on her pretty face.
‘I thought I’d be able to sneak up on you.’ Poppy laughed before she stepped forward and hugged her tightly.
‘You should know better than that. You’ve just got out of the shower. You smell fresh.’