The Life Saver

by Lilian Darcy

  But not yet.

  I don't want to lose him yet.

  Not when this is so new.

  And I don't want to lose him to Tara.

  Tara was in bed by the time Rip got home—later than he'd intended, at nearly midnight. She must have been asleep. She looked bleary-eyed and her hair was all over the place. Had he woken her? She appeared in the doorway of the spare room just as he was about to pass it on the way to his own room. She was dressed in a floating white nightdress.

  'Starting to get worried about you,' she said.

  'The practice is on call tonight. Haven't you learned not to rely on my hours?'

  She made a face. 'I'd forgotten. So were you called out?'

  'We had a couple of phone consults between nine and ten, but nothing major.'

  'Hmm.' She nodded and narrowed her eyes for a moment.

  'But you've been asleep, by the look of you,' he said.

  'I'm not sleeping that well at the moment. I conk out early, but then I wake up again. I'm not going to blame you for it.'

  He couldn't think of an answer to that.

  'Had a good evening?' she asked.

  'Uh, yeah. Yes, it was. Nice.'

  Fabulous, in fact.

  In the glowing aftermath of their love-making Jo had looked radiant, soft, on fire, cheeky and vulnerable all at the same time. He'd felt so tender about her, and like a complete heel, as if he and Tara were still married and he'd just embarked on a nasty little affair that could only end in someone getting hurt, most probably Jo.

  They'd teased each other, standing in her kitchen with wine while she'd tended to the quick-cooking pasta dish for their late meal. He'd dealt quickly and easily with two phone calls from patients, and they'd barely qualified as disruptions. Jo had kissed him whenever she'd felt like it, which had been often, and he loved the way she'd exercised her new rights over his body, supple as a cat, seductive as a courtesan.

  The spark of life in her spirit, which he'd taken for granted and barely noticed until so recently, tonight seemed to have fanned into a great, glowing coal that had reflected in her eyes, turned her laugh into a saucy, throaty chuckle and even changed the way she stood and moved.

  He could sense her courage, because she was giving him so much, so freely, when he knew he'd promised very little in return. He had hated tearing himself away, staying a good two hours longer than he should have done, and that was why he was standing here at almost midnight with his ex-wife.

  Dangerous hour, midnight.

  'Rip...' She put her hand on his arm, and he knew what he was meant to do.

  The memories of how they'd been together were so strong and so familiar. They jarred with the fresh, unexpected memories of Jo just a few hours before.

  'No,' he said. No hesitation, no doubt.

  For a moment she looked as if she was going to push. Tara-style pushing. The big eyes, the unerring movements, the naughty-girl smile. He held his breath.

  Don't do this.

  She must have gotten the message. 'No, well, you're right, we should talk first. We shouldn't pre-empt or complicate. Even for old times' sake.'

  'Definitely not for that.'

  She yawned. 'I must try and get back to sleep, but I probably won't now. Not for hours.'

  'A mug of warm milk?'

  'Yuck!'

  'I won't suggest anything stronger.'

  'No, because I wouldn't take it. Goodnight, Rip. See you in the morning.'

  She turned and smiled at him just before disappearing back into her room, and he wondered if she realised that the chaste white cotton of her nightdress was so thin. The way it half revealed and half concealed her body was far more tantalising than full exposure would have been.

  Am I tantalised, then?

  He was suddenly too fatigued to have any idea.

  'The chest infection seems to have cleared up nicely,' Rip said to Thornton Liddle the next morning. He laid his stethoscope back on the desk and unfastened the blood-pressure cuff from around Mr Liddle's arm. 'And your blood pressure is responding to the medication.'

  'Feel strong as an ox,' the old man agreed. 'Nothing wrong with me.'

  'How are you going on quitting the cigarettes?'

  'Well, I'm cutting down. I'm only smoking thirty a day now, instead of forty. Maybe even twenty-five.'

  'That's something. You'll try and get lower, I hope, and then cut them out altogether?'

  'Taking it slow. There's nothing wrong with my health. I read where as soon as you quit you start to undo some of the damage, so there's no rush.'

  Rip didn't argue the dodgy interpretation. Instead, he rolled up his sleeve and showed Mr Liddle his own nicotine patch. He planned to step down to a lower dose soon. 'This has been working for me. I can tell you more about it, if you want to try it.'

  'A patch? Hmm.' The old man sounded sceptical.

  'Take a brochure, and think about it. Meanwhile, let's take a look at your eyes before you go.'

  'My eyes are fine.'

  'I think it's been a while since we tested them.'

  'Went to the eye people—you know, the glasses people. They said I'm OK, no problems.'

  Rip didn't think they'd said any such thing, but unfortunately he was powerless to take action, he could only provide advice. Mr Liddle's eyes on their own were probably still borderline safe, but in combination with other factors, he didn't have the reaction time of a younger man. Vermont didn't require older drivers to take a road test at any point, and licences were usually renewed for four years. The decision to stop driving rested with the individual driver, and Mr Liddle obviously still considered himself to be safe behind the wheel. Maybe he was right.

  'What does your wife say, Mr Liddle?' Rip asked carefully.

  Slow down, mostly.' He laughed at his own humour, then straightened his face. 'No, that's the thing, see. With Mona in the front seat, it's like we've got two pairs of eyes on the road. Couldn't be safer. And I'm not stupid. I don't drive at night or in bad weather unless I have to.'

  'That's sensible.' Although Rip still felt uneasy. He gave it one more try. 'The AARP can give you advice on how to monitor your driving safety, too. Are you a member?' The American Association of Retired People was a powerful lobby group for older citizens, and provided many benefits.

  'Anything that gets me discounts, I'm a member.' Mr Liddle laughed again.

  'Check their website or give them a call. They have driver safety courses for older drivers.'

  'I'm fine.'

  He stood up, and so did Rip, recognising that advice and coaxing could only go so far. He hated sounding preachy, and he had at least two patients waiting. He'd been a little late in this morning, after making a couple of calls to get Tara into a decent hotel.

  He'd known she would want some hard evidence that he was serious about the idea, and her reproachful eyes over the top of a mug of coffee had told him she'd jump at any chance to resist. Had she always been this manipulative and this emotionally ruthless? He didn't think so but, then, maybe she'd never needed to be during their marriage. Had he always made things too easy for her?

  Jo would also want some hard evidence, and after last night she had a right to it, but he hadn't seen her yet. She'd already been in her office with a patient when he'd walked through the front door, and you couldn't...or at least he couldn't...just knock on your practice partner's door in a thirty-second grab between patients and announce, 'Thanks for the sex. I've reserved a hotel room for Tara until after we've talked.'

  Actually, that was more or less how he did say it, in the end.

  They had a busy morning, and apart from a couple of awkward smiles, separated from each other by three computers, two practice managers and a long desk, they barely got a chance to connect. He wanted to ask her along to the Harriet Cafe for lunch, but if Dotty, Trudy, Merril or Amanda happened to be going there, or indeed any one of several hundred other Harriet residents, they wouldn't be able to talk.

  Finally, he accosted her over
the sandwiches she was eating at her desk...

  'The glamorous life of a doctor,' Jo said, seeing Ripley looking at the untidy sandwich wrap she was using for a plate. It was a self-conscious line, and his entrance had been self-conscious also. She felt a ridiculous need to make this easy for him. 'Sit down, Rip.'

  'I won't. I just wanted to say thanks, if that's appropriate.'

  Was it?

  Jo shrugged and smiled. 'If that's how you feel.'

  'I feel good. Very good about last night. Great about last night. Sorry that it happened, because—'

  'Great, but sorry. Are we making sense here?'

  'No. But we're being honest. The timing wasn't fair to you. It might have been exactly what I needed...I think it was...but it wasn't fair. And I just wanted to let you know that Tara is definitely going to a hotel today. That new resort off the interstate. I'll be meeting her there after work and we're going to talk.'

  'Do you know what you're going to say?'

  'No. It depends on what she says, I think.'

  'Do you still love her, Rip?' That was all Jo really needed to know.

  'Love's not something you can just switch off once it gets inconvenient.'

  'No. True.'

  'But sometimes it changes in nature. The transition has to be difficult. I'm going to stop talking now, because I don't know what I'm saying.'

  'Yet,' she suggested.

  'Yet,' he agreed.

  'Could you let me know...?' She took a breath. Was she just being pathetic here? 'Fairly soon what you and Tara decide?'

  He swore. 'Of course, Jo! I'll come round and see you later tonight. As if I'd keep you dangling! As if I'd keep either of us dangling!'

  Or Tara?

  Jo's stomach crumbled inside her like old cheese, and she knew it would be a long afternoon.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Jo felt as if she was waiting for the results of her examinations in final-year medicine, knowing that they were due to be posted at some point that evening.

  She made scrambled egg on toast for dinner then couldn't eat it, sat Miffy on her lap but discovered that a cat made a poor substitute for a man's body, pricked up her ears every time she heard a car then listened seconds later to it swish on up the street while her heart dropped.

  Finally, realising that she was getting so tense she'd explode at Rip when he did arrive—if he arrived—she grabbed her coat and hat and flashlight and took herself for a walk. It was a fine, dry night, chilly with a' breath of falling dew in hollows and still spots. The lights in the windows of the houses were warm and inviting, but there was something very good and nourishing about tramping up and down the streets on her own.

  Harriet was such a nice little town, tucked away in the green lee of the mountains, with a fast-flowing river rushing through its heart. You had the ski fields and the fall colour, the antique stores and quilt stores, the hunting and fishing, the ice-cream factory and Lake Champlain, all within easy driving distance. You had an easy, steady pace of life, with a sense of history and tradition if you wanted to go looking for it.

  She liked it here.

  She wanted to stay, and had no desire to go back to Connecticut where her sister lived, or to Florida where her parents eventually planned to retire.

  But she wanted something more—something at the centre of her life. Yes, the traditional things, a husband and children, and she didn't want to have to go to New York or Boston on an aggressive search for this missing ingredient.

  She wanted it simply to unfold.

  She wanted it to unfold with Rip.

  She didn't want this knife-edge uncertainty and waiting, she wanted...

  Rounding a corner back into her own street, she saw Rip's car parked in her driveway, saw him coming down her front steps and her front path, unlocking the car door, sliding into the front seat, starting the engine.

  'Rip! Wait!'

  He was already backing down the driveway and, with his car windows up, he couldn't hear. She ran like a crazy woman, hoping no one was looking out of those warm, inviting Vermont windows.

  'If he doesn't see me and drives away,' she muttered to herself, wild with remorse that she hadn't left a note on the door, and even that she'd gone for a walk at all, 'I'll die!'

  Then she laughed out loud. Wasn't that just the teensiest bit of an over-reaction?

  Yes, but it didn't stop her from feeling it.

  'Rip!'

  In the street, the red brake lights came on and he stopped. He'd seen her. She slowed, already panting—from panic more than from lack of breath. It was pointless to pretend she hadn't been running after him. As soon as he'd zoomed the car in reverse up the street back into her driveway and had climbed out, she told him, 'I was afraid you wouldn't see me. I'd gone for a walk. Come in.'

  'I hated not finding you here. I must have knocked and waited three or four times. I even went round to the back.'

  'Well, I am here now.' She wanted to kiss him. At least hug him. But something in his body language warned her not to. Not yet.

  'You've talked to Tara tonight?' She led the way into the house.

  'We had dinner in the hotel restaurant. She's asked for some time, Jo.'

  'Time for what?' She interrupted herself, 'Do you want tea? Something stronger?'

  'Tea.' He gave a vague wave, didn't care.

  She put the kettle on the stove anyhow, just for something to do with her hands.

  'Time to think, mainly. The guy she—Serrano, hell, I still can't say his first name. He seems to have moved on. Tara hadn't realised she was only part of a pattern. He hurt her very much, I think.'

  'Shouldn't you regard that as a kind of universal karmic pay-back?' she drawled, the humour edgy and witchy and cynical.

  'I'm such a nice guy, I can't,' he drawled in return.

  'No. Seriously.'

  'No, seriously,' he echoed, mocking both of them. 'I wonder if we're all entitled to one mistake. Tara made hers, and it seems like she's the one who's truly gotten hurt.'

  'You weren't hurt? Last year was all my imagination?'

  'I was hurt,' he admitted, his voice rough. 'And I was angry. And I'm still angry. But I don't think anger is the power attitude in this situation.'

  'You think forgiveness might be?'

  'Or my being at least prepared to give her time, which is what she's asked for. A couple of weeks.'

  Which sounded like no time at all, until Jo remembered everything that had happened to her own heart in half that interval.

  'Here's your tea,' she said.

  Their hands touched as she gave him the cup, and that was all they both needed. The wash of awareness swamped them, encircled them, enclosed them in the same space where breathing wasn't possible and where every sense was heightened, every perception more vivid.

  Jo looked up into Ripley's face and read the same feelings that she had—need and hunger and a sense of connection and trust so powerful that she couldn't believe he'd be able to let it go, ever. They had a foundation for this. They knew each other. It Wasn't some fleeting crush, based on a mistaken understanding about who the other person was.

  But, then, Ripley must have felt exactly these things for Tara once.

  He leaned towards the bench top and put his tea cup down, and Jo knew he was going to kiss her. 'I swore to myself I wasn't going to do this,' he muttered. 'I just came to talk. I swore to myself I'd be able to keep it at that. We can't do this.'

  He did it anyway. Wrapped his arms around her and held her so hard she could have let her legs buckle and she wouldn't have fallen. Kissed her deeply, invading her mouth with a certainty that he was wanted there.

  And he was.

  Because Jo had no reason in the world to want to push him away.

  She touched him possessively, as if by exploring his body, knowing every inch of it, she could store up the memories the way squirrels stored nuts for winter, as if memories could ever be enough. Even as she touched him, she knew that memory could never replace exp
erience and promise. This would be the best she ever had, and only the certainty of having the best over and over again in the future could really satisfy her.

  Rip couldn't give her that certainty. Not yet. Maybe never. And whether she kept kissing him or pushed him away, what she risked in the future wouldn't change.

  So I may as well have this...

  For as long as it could last.

  Her body seemed to melt against him with its own heat, her breasts against his chest, his arousal hard yet giving against her lower stomach. She held him in place there with her hands cupped across his backside and didn't care what a brazen message she sent.

  Yes, Rip, I want you.

  Inside me.

  Just like last night.

  As close as a man and a woman can get.

  She began to let her hips slide from side to side, deliberately stimulating the most sensitive part of him, making the barrier of clothing meaningless between them, showing him her own need. He groaned and kept kissing her, his lips and tongue moving with deep, languorous strokes, his hands cupping her face as if he was afraid she might try to turn her head away.

  Oh, can't you feel, Rip? I'll never do that...

  He did it.

  The sudden sideways twist of his head shocked her— hurt her even, because his jaw jarred against hers and she bit her tongue. 'We have to stop,' he rasped.

  'Why?' Her tongue stung sharply and she couldn't soften the blunt question.

  'Because I told Tara I wouldn't do this.'

  'You told Tara you wouldn't sleep with me?' With effort, she managed not to let him see that she was in pain, and the sting began to ease.

  'Not with you,' he said. 'I didn't say your name. Of course I didn't. But she guessed that there was a—that there was the potential for something with someone here in Harriet. A new—'

  'She knows you pretty well.'

  'She does. And she asked me straight out. "Please, will you not sleep with her until we've had time to work out what's possible?'"

  'In those words.'

  'In those words.'

  'And you said...'

  'How could I not give her that, Jo?' He stepped back, balling his fists at his sides. 'It wasn't a lot to ask. If I'm not going to at least give her that, then why am I not sending her packing right away?'