by Lilian Darcy
‘You really think I’m breezing through the week? Living it up at the doctors’ house? Cruising for chicks at the Black Cockatoo?’
If you feel the same way I do, why are we in this mess? she wanted to yell at him. Why are we putting ourselves through this for no reason?
Bloody heroes!
‘Shall we just…go to the party, Joe?’ she suggested, knowing they couldn’t get into an intense and personal conversation now, pull their lives apart and put them back together again just metres from patients in their beds.
‘Yeah, let’s,’ he agreed.
So they went, walking in silence out of the hospital and across the memorial garden in the soft night, not touching, no longer a partnership, but still with so much going on.
And it was noted by numerous pairs of eyes that they arrived together, even though they moved apart as soon as separate groups of friends greeted them.
‘So?’ Grace demanded, cornering Christina in the big kitchen a short while later. ‘You look great. Brian took you to the Athina, didn’t he?’
‘Yes, but that wasn’t—’
‘No, I know, it was a much bigger evening than you wanted, but don’t tell me about dinner with Brian. Tell me about Joe. I saw you coming across the garden with him.’
Someone had turned the music up loud. A couple of kids were dancing on the lawn, up past their bedtime. There were people in the pool, and Gina was acting as a self-appointed lifeguard. Joe was mooching around out there as well. Brian put in an appearance, but didn’t stay long. Mrs Grubb had ignored her role as guest of honour and was taking charge of the food.
Joe. Grace wanted to hear about Joe, the way she had three days ago by the water-tank in Gunyamurra.
‘Bottom line, Grace, it’s the swan-wife issues,’ Christina told her friend.
‘Oh, it is?’ Grace looked intrigued. And worried.
‘Yep. I was right. You were right. Sticks out a mile. Incredible that no one else in town has noticed the tell-tale dropping of flight feathers.’
‘But seriously!’ Grace yelled above the music.
‘Seriously? OK. Swan-sister issues. Family issues.’ She couldn’t go into details. Joe had made it clear he didn’t want it all talked about. ‘A family he can’t leave or let down,’ was all she could say.
‘And that you can’t be a part of?’
‘According to him. He’s a go-it-alone kind of man, shouldering the whole lot, with a great big suffering hero complex, Grace.’
‘Which only makes you love him more, even when you don’t want to, because in our line of work you come across too many men who don’t shoulder their responsibilities at all.’
Yes. Exactly.
‘Why does it work that way, damn it?’ Christina yelled back, over an extra-loud patch in the music. ‘Love him, and get angry with him, and realise that I’m not doing myself any favours with any of it.’
Grace looked at her, tilted her head to one side and frowned. ‘You know what? I’m starting to think there’s a better way to look at this. I think the grieving period was premature.’
‘OK, what’s this now?’ Christina let out a weary laugh. ‘You’re telling me the sky isn’t falling after all? Is that what you’re suddenly saying? It’s not what you were saying on Monday at Gunyamurra, Grace O’Riordan.’
‘Give him another chance.’
‘Wha-a-at?’
‘Didn’t you say to me that if you knew why then you thought you could deal with it? Now you know why. The swan sister. Which is way better than the swan wife. So deal with it for a while, and see how that feels.’
‘Have him back in his old room? It’s all settled that Megan and the baby are going to move in.’
‘Good. Because you don’t want him back in his old room. He can stay in his new room, here. You want to give yourself some protection.’
‘The protection of the two of us maintaining separate dwellings three kilometres apart, while I open up my heart and tell him, Here, rip into it.’
‘See? You understand the situation perfectly.’
‘Grace!’
‘Christina, Christina. We all care about you, and you’re a mess. If Joe had frolicked off into the sunset without a backward glance, like a certain recent pair of doctors I could mention, I’d want you to stick to your guns on this. Well, you’d have no choice. But look at him—’
‘He’s—?’ Christina whirled around in search of him. She hadn’t realised he was anywhere near. He’d been outside ten minutes ago. She found part of an arm and shoulder, the top of his head and one hip. Her view of him kept getting obscured by other people, but she went on looking in that direction anyway.
‘Yep,’ Grace said, looking the same way. ‘Sticking his head in the drinks fridge, wearing a thousand-yard stare. Been doing it for the past five minutes. Doesn’t have a clue what he’s looking for. The thing’s on its last legs anyhow, and with the influx of warm air he’s generating, I’m not holding my breath for the beer and orange juice staying cold next week. You see, he’s just as much of a mess as you are.’
‘Which, according to you, is a good thing.’
‘Has to be, doesn’t it?’ Grace answered gently. She looked at Christina for a moment. ‘Think about it.’
Joe didn’t give her a chance to do that. He emerged drinkless from the fridge and caught sight of her. ‘This is where you’ve got to?’ he said, as if he’d found her under the front seat of the car, like a lost CD.
‘I’m prepared to consider other locations to park myself.’
He didn’t say another word, just grabbed her hand, engulfing it like a big leather glove.
‘Where are we going, Joe?’
‘Beach? I don’t know.’
‘The beach sounds good. Will anyone…?’
‘No. No one will care. They might notice, but they won’t care.’
There was no moonlight tonight, but the frilly white edges of the waves seemed to throw off their own luminescent glow. The sand felt cool and spongy. Joe stopped to lever off his running shoes and roll his trousers to the knees. He could never bear to have anything between his feet and the beach. Christina kicked her shoes off, too, and they walked the length of the cove to the rocky outcrop at the foot of the bluff and found a flat, cool place to sit and talk.
‘I’m glad I told you about Amber on Monday night,’ Joe said. ‘I didn’t think it would feel good afterwards, but it did.’
‘Why didn’t you think it would feel good?’
‘Because I was getting my nice, separate universes all mixed up.’ He reached out for her hand again, didn’t add anything to his answer.
Christina thought about pushing. Why? Why did you want separate universes in the first place? Why won’t you trust me or…or celebrate…when I say I want to be part of any universe that you’re in, forever, for the rest of our lives?
But then she remembered what he’d said about talking, just that afternoon. She hadn’t been in the right mood to listen at the time, but the words had stayed in her mind all the same. How you could talk about trivial, impersonal things like garden chores and TV sport and it could still mean something if there was the right spirit underneath. How actions said just as much as words. Or said more.
Meanwhile, his hand was talking to her. He had the back of it resting against the rock, his knuckles taking the roughness of the salt-crusted stone while her hand got to rest in the soft, warm bed of his big palm. The ball of his thumb slid back and forth across her skin, painting loose circles of sensation.
She looked down. Only this one point of contact. Two hands. One that was on the thin side, with a scattering of freckles and a current unmet need for moisturiser. The other built like a bear’s paw, only smooth and brown. She couldn’t see it, but she knew there was an old scar cutting across the pad of muscle below his thumb. Letting her gaze track upwards, she found the blue-black tattoo like a narrow bracelet on his upper arm, circling the strong muscle.
‘I’m glad you told me about Amber, too,’ she said at
last. ‘I only wish you’d done it sooner.’
‘Don’t go telling everyone in Crocodile Creek, will you?’
‘Of course I won’t!’
‘She hates to think that people talk about her, even if she knows they mean well. She doesn’t even like to hear me telling her too often that I’m proud of her.’
‘How does she handle your parents and all their conflict?’
‘I don’t think she’s quite realised yet that it should be different, that not all fathers are aggressive and loud and bullying, and secretly ready to put their daughters through any amount of plastic surgery necessary to make her look normal.’
‘He wants that? For her to look normal?’
‘No matter what the cost.’ He picked up his previous thread. ‘And meanwhile that not all mothers are driven to living their most important emotions in secret, because Mum knows Amber only wants the surgery that’s necessary for her health—heaven knows, that’s extensive enough. She knows Amber doesn’t want procedure after procedure in a doomed quest for the perfect supermodel eyes and nose, but she pretends to go along with Geoff, my stepfather. She sacrifices too much, tears herself in half agreeing with everyone, while Geoff rants and raves and drinks up half of what she tries to save.’
He shook his head. They’d both got tangled in what they were saying, in danger of losing the original thread. It happened when something was this complicated, emotionally.
‘But you’re offering Amber a different model of male behaviour,’ Christina said. ‘That’s so good, Joe.’
‘I’m just her brother.’
‘She must think that brothers are pretty OK, then.’
‘Hope so.’
More silence.
He eased his hand from the rock. She turned it over and traced the red indentations imprinted by the rough texture of the stone. ‘Looks sore,’ she said, thinking about Grace’s advice to give him another chance.
‘It’s OK,’ Joe said.
‘Bloody hero!’
He grinned. ‘Yeah, I’m a real nuisance.’
‘You are!’ She grinned back. Then she sighed.
His black eyes glimmered at her, steady and open.
Heroes had their good points.
She made her decision.
‘Could I, please, kiss you, Joe?’ she whispered.
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘ARE you sure that’s a good idea, Tink?’ Joe said, even though the words felt as if they might kill him. ‘Kissing me?’
‘It’s a brilliant idea.’ She leaned in and touched the pads of her fingers to his lips. She wasn’t grinning any more.
Neither was he. Her kiss felt as if it might kill him, too. He knew he shouldn’t let it happen, but right now he didn’t have it in him to say no when she was insisting yes. He just waited for her mouth.
It felt cool. It felt soft. She teased him, only brushing her lips against his, pressing them briefly then brushing them away. She took his face between soft hands and angled her head to one side, brushed his mouth again, angled her head the opposite way, dabbed a tiny bit of moisture with the tip of her tongue, just where his lips parted.
Then she sat back and pulled the pins out of her piled hair, combed the loosened strands with her fingers and shook them down around her shoulders, releasing a cloud of sweet, nutty scent into the air.
His groin tightened in a rush of heat. He wanted to grab her, ravish her, show her his strength, give in to his impatience as fast as a man could, and yet he held back. He’d been wanting this all week, thinking about it, remembering Sunday night and aching with loss and sheer physical frustration at the thought that it might never happen again.
Now she was offering, sweet and wicked at the same time, getting to the point as slowly, slowly as she could get away with, while his body responded lightning fast. He hid the speed and power of his reaction, still at a loss. He’d listened to what she’d said she wanted on Sunday night, and had respected her right to make that decision. Now she was saying something different—backing down, really, saying that she’d decided it could work on his terms after all.
So what was his problem?
Christina didn’t know either.
‘Hey!’ she whispered at last, letting her breath and the light touch of her fingernails caress his ear. ‘It takes two.’ She kissed a trail of sensation down his neck, threaded her fingers into his hair. His spine began to tingle.
‘Yeah?’ he growled. His body echoed the sceptical word with an unequivocal imperative of its own.
She’s saying yes, idiot, so let’s make it yes. Now!
‘This is what you want?’ he growled. She shrieked with surprised satisfaction as he engulfed her with his arms and half rolled, half carried her from the rocks onto the sand. ‘Yes?’ he growled again, as they rolled. He also meant, ‘Here?’
And she knew it. ‘Yes,’ she told him, getting breathless.
She ended up on top and he pulled her close. She lay with her head pillowed on his chest and he stroked her silky hair, giving her one last chance to change her mind. She didn’t speak. Then, with his eyes closed yet still able to find her unerringly, he cupped his palm against her jaw and turned her face towards his.
No games now. Their kiss turned deep and hungry at once. They invaded each other’s mouths, pushed at each other’s clothing. Their bodies were shaking and they ignored the sand. And if anyone else decided to take a walk on this beach tonight…Well, this would be over pretty soon, the way they were each pulling the other towards the brink.
She sat up, sliding up his body to straddle his chest, and he opened his eyes, wanting to see her—see the hair that fell loosely over him, the lost, blissful expression on her face, the hunger and the beauty. And it was all there.
He watched as he touched her, running his hands along the fabric-covered thighs that squeezed against his chest, loving everything about her while still knowing that this wasn’t enough. Or maybe it was the whole problem. He cared about her well-being too much to rope her into the complexity of his life.
She pulled her shimmery top over her head, her raised arms lifting and rounding her breasts in their dark lace bra. He reached up for her, running his hands over those jutting forms and then down the satin of her bare skin. During all of this, her eyes stayed closed, which meant he could keep watching her.
Watching her emotional nakedness, and her trust.
Watching just how much she gave to him, now as always.
And that was when he knew that they had to stop.
His hands stilled, resting on her hips. She waited, a little frown on her forehead. She was almost smiling, anticipating, waiting for him to cup her breasts again, or pull her down so he could reach the fastening of her bra. She thought he was teasing her.
‘Joe…?’
He spoke the first part of his thought out loud. ‘This feels so good.’
‘So why are you making us wait?’
There was a beat of silence before he answered, ‘Because we can’t do this.’ And even while he was saying it he was mentally kicking himself for abusing his body—and hers—with this much denial.
Ah, hell, saying it wasn’t enough, he realised. He had to make a move.
He did so with an immense effort, lifting her off him, coaxing her sideways onto the sand, pulling himself up to sit so that he could protect his throbbing groin. His breathing came with an effort. She was looking at him, stricken and bewildered.
‘Bit gob-smacked,’ she said, making light of it. ‘Thought it was going pretty well.’
‘But what’s changed, Tink?’ he burst out. ‘What’s changed for you since I moved into the doctors’ house three days ago that makes this suddenly OK now? Because you know about Amber? Because I said I was glad that you did?’
‘Thought it was a pretty good start,’ she answered lightly.
He wasn’t fooled.
He knew the way her thinking had travelled. She thought they were going to do this in stages. Step one, Joe talks about his
family and discovers it doesn’t feel as difficult and bad as he might have thought. Step two, Christina comes to New Zealand for a holiday, meets Amber and their mother and Amber’s Dad and tells Joe how great Amber is, and that there’s hidden strength in his mother, and even a couple of qualities in his stepfather that she can connect with and admire. Step three, she throws herself into the whole situation with a hundred per cent of her heart and Joe feels so pressured by what she’s prepared to sacrifice for his sake that he forgets how to breathe.
Which means, step four, they both suffocate.
He’d seen his mother stretching herself in ten directions at once, trying to fill the bottomless well of other people’s needs. She’d come close to destroying herself in the process. And it wasn’t that he thought men were stronger. But he thought that they often protected themselves better. They had a streak of selfishness that meant they would always look out for number one.
He’d done it himself with Christina. He’d known from the beginning that he couldn’t stretch himself far enough to give her the whole package, so he hadn’t tried. He’d protected himself, by keeping their relationship light and fun and restricted to the present. And he’d thought he’d been making the boundaries clear to her all along, but that hadn’t helped.
Christina wouldn’t protect herself at all. She didn’t want to. She wanted to jump in with both feet. She was such a giving kind of person, but he couldn’t let her do it, not when he’d seen just how badly wrong it could go.
‘It’s a mistake,’ he said bluntly. ‘This isn’t going to work for either of us, because it isn’t what you want, and you know it. You were right on Sunday night about ending it. Now you’re talking about a “pretty good start” to a rekindling, as if I’m a fish on a line and you’re carefully, carefully reeling me in.’
Although they weren’t touching, he felt her stiffen in anger and shock. ‘That’s an awful—’
‘No! I don’t mean it the way it sounded,’ he said quickly.
‘That I’m a cold-blooded manipulator and you have a—a—fish brain? I hope not!’ Her eyes flashed at him, because she had spirit as well as kindness.
