His mouth lowered to hers and he claimed her.
His woman.
And Amy…
This was an impossibility. This man… He had no place in her life. She was trapped here and tomorrow he’d be gone.
But tonight…
Tonight she held him close. She was twenty-eight years old, she’d been engaged to someone else for the last two years, it was six years before she could leave this place…
All of those things were as nothing on this night.
For tonight there was only Joss.
‘I love you,’ she whispered against his chest, so low that Joss could hardly hear against the sound of wind and waves. It didn’t matter. She didn’t want him to hear. It wasn’t a declaration to him. It was a declaration to herself.
Tomorrow the loss and the loneliness would begin. Tonight there was Joss.
She lifted her face to his and she linked her hands behind his head and pulled him down to her.
‘Joss,’ she whispered, and after that she couldn’t whisper a thing. For a very long time.
Afterwards, Joss could never remember how they made it to the house. Making love on the beach wasn’t an option. Maybe in midsummer-but not when the sand was still soaked from two weeks of storms and the wind was still chill. No. He wanted this woman in the comfort of a bed.
Liar. If the bed wasn’t on offer…
He wanted this woman any way he could have her. And he wanted her for ever.
She wasn’t arguing. In that final moment as she placed her lips against his they both knew that they were surrendering themselves to each other. Completely. If this night was all they had, then so be it. Better one night than never. If this night was to last a lifetime then they’d take this night with joy.
They weren’t protected. Joss had nothing and when he remembered he groaned, but Amy wasn’t fussed at all.
‘If you’re happy to take the risk then so am I,’ she murmured as they reached the bedroom door and paused. There was a brief moment of sanity to reassure Bertram-and lock him in the kitchen-and take stock of what they knew lay ahead. ‘If I end up pregnant from this night I’d think it nothing but wonderful.’ She smiled up at him. ‘And you?’
He thought about that. Nothing but wonderful…
Amy carrying his child?
So much for his fear of commitment. The thought filled him with unadulterated joy.
‘You’re sure, my love?’
‘I’m sure. I’d make a very good single mum.’
He had his own ideas about that. Single mum? Humph!
But now wasn’t the time to declare his hand. Not until he was sure. If she thought she was headed for single parenthood, well and good. For now.
With a whoop of sheer loving triumph he swept her up into his arms so he was carrying her down the hall. He was laughing into her gorgeous dancing eyes and she was laughing back at him, loving him, wanting him…
‘Then so be it,’ he told her. ‘So be it, my love. Let’s see if we can make a baby. The way I feel tonight, we might even make quads!’
They were falling onto his bed, their clothes were disappearing. The moonlight was slanting across their bodies, as if in blessing…
Man and woman, becoming one.
Dawn came too soon. Or maybe it wasn’t dawn. Something was ringing.
Joss stirred. Amy was cradled in his arms, her lovely hair was splayed out over his chest and she was cradled against him in love and in peace.
Who said married couples needed double beds? he thought sleepily. Single worked just fine.
‘Um…it’s the telephone.’ Amy lifted her head. ‘Why did we end up in your room when the phone’s in my room?’
‘The world’s in the rest of the house. Here there’s just us.’
Which was fine-but the telephone was ringing.
‘Maybe it’s urgent,’ Joss said.
‘I think we should forget the medical imperatives. Charles the First can give it a shot.’
Charles the First? Oh, right. The ancient doctor with dementia. ‘Maybe.’ But the ringing kept on. ‘Maybe someone’s dead.’
‘There’s not a lot we can do if they’re dead,’ she said practically. ‘Call the undertaker-not us.’
‘Amy…’
She sighed. ‘Hey, I’m the conscientious one, not you.’ She rubbed her face against his bare chest, and her hair felt like silk against his skin. The sensation was unbearably erotic. ‘OK, oh, noble doctor. Go and answer the phone. I’ll keep the bed warm.’
‘Promise?’
She smiled down into his eyes, love and laughter fighting for supremacy. Love won. ‘I promise.’ But she was kissing him so deeply that he couldn’t resist.
The phone stopped. Two minutes later it started again and Joss swore.
‘It’s nine o’clock on a Monday morning,’ Amy told him, still laughing. ‘The world has a right to intrude.’
‘It’s not nine o’clock.’
‘That’s what your watch says.’
‘You’re lying on my watch.’
‘That’s not all I’m lying on. Go and answer the phone.’
‘Did I tell you I love you?’
She beamed. ‘Yes. But tell me again if you like.’
‘I love you.’
‘There you go, then.’ She kissed him lightly on the lips and pushed him away. ‘That makes a hundred and eleven. But tell me again.’
‘I love you.’
‘A hundred and twelve. Go and answer the phone.’
It was Sue-Ellen from the nursing home.
‘The ferry’s operating. Emma’s parents were the first over and they want to know if they can take their daughter home right away.’
Joss groaned. He really did need to check the child first.
‘I’ll be there as soon as I can,’ he told her.
When he returned to his bedroom Amy was gone.
‘Amy?’
‘I’m in the shower.’
‘You promised to keep the bed warm.’
‘I lied. People do.’
He thought about that as he hauled open the bathroom door to find her under a cloud of steam.
‘I don’t,’ he told her.
‘Yeah, right.’
There was only one way to handle insubordination like that. Joss hauled the shower screen wide and swept Amy up into his arms. They stood naked as the water poured over them and he kissed her so hard she lost her breath and had to pummel him away with her fists. Breathless and laughing, she leaned back in his arms and looked up at him with love.
‘If you need to see Emma before she’s discharged, we need to go.’
Damnably they did.
‘Joss…’
‘Mmm?’
‘Thank you for last night.’
‘It’s the first of-’
‘No.’ The laughter died then. ‘Joss, it’s not the first of anything. It’s a one-off. Today you’ll get into your stepmother’s amazing pink Volkswagen and you’ll drive onto the ferry and out of my life.’
‘No.’
‘Yes.’ She struggled to be free and reluctantly he loosed her. Not so much as you’d notice, though. She was still linked within the circle of his arms.
‘I’ve had a long-term engagement,’ she told him. ‘I don’t want another.’
‘But-’
‘No.’ She was holding him close but her voice was urgent. ‘Joss, you know I can’t leave here for six years. This place would die. So many people would lose so much. I can’t hurt them and you wouldn’t want me to.’
He thought about that. In truth, he’d been thinking of little else. Except for how wonderful this woman was.
How he needed to keep her.
‘You can’t stay here,’ she told him.
He thought about that.
‘Joss?’
‘Mmm?’
‘You need to return to Sydney.’
He did. Damnably, he did. There was so much to do.
‘Remember me,’ she told him. �
��But not…not with faithfulness. I’m not waiting for you and you’re not waiting for me. We’re free.’
Free.
Once it had seemed the only way to be. Now, as he kissed her one last long time, it seemed a fate worse than any he could think of.
Free?
Where was the joy in that?
They made their way back to the nursing home in almost as deep a silence as the way they’d driven home the previous night.
So much had changed-and yet so little. They reached the nursing home and they were surrounded by need.
Emma’s parents were waiting to see him, desperate to know her poisoning hadn’t caused long-term damage. Charlotte’s father had appeared, wanting to blast someone for his daughter’s unhappiness, Rhonda Coutts’s daughter had come to make sure her mother was being well cared for and was recovering. And more…
There must have been a longer queue on the far side of the river waiting to come to Iluka than the queue on the Iluka side waiting to get out, Joss decided. He fielded one query after another, always conscious that Amy was working close by. Amy was here.
Amy would always be here.
‘Now the ferry’s operating, Daisy’s happy for you to take her car back to Sydney,’ his father told him, and he had to raise a smile to thank her. Driving a pink Volkswagen would get him a few odd looks but those looks were the least of his problems. ‘That is,’ his father added, looking sideways at his son, ‘if you still want to go.’
He didn’t, but it was never going to get easier. Another night like last night and it’d be impossible.
His life was waiting in Sydney. Or…the chance of a new life?
‘He’s going.’ Unnoticed, Amy had come up behind them. She smiled at David, who’d driven in to the nursing home specifically to find his son. ‘He’s being kicked out of his lodgings, so he must.’
That was news to Joss. ‘I’m being kicked out?’
‘Yes.’ Her face was strained and pale but somehow she summoned a smile. ‘It’s far too crowded with two people, one dog and only ten bedrooms. Someone has to go. I drew straws and Joss is it.’
‘Will you keep Bertram?’ Joss demanded suddenly. He couldn’t bear to think of her in that mausoleum alone. But she shook her head.
‘Of course not. He’s your dog.’
‘I’ll buy you a pup.’
‘Thank you, but no.’
And into his head came a faintly remembered line. ‘I want no more of you…’ Where had that come from? Schoolboy Shakespeare? Wherever, it was apt.
It was time to go. He couldn’t commit himself to this woman. At least…not yet.
He still had almost a week of leave left. He could stop at Bowra and then…
‘You look like you’re aching to get back to Sydney already,’ David said, watching Joss’s face. He smiled at Amy and explained. ‘Joss always gets this far-away look when he’s making plans, and he’s making plans now. What’s on back in Sydney?’
‘I’m not sure,’ Joss said slowly. ‘I won’t know until I get there.’
There was one more heartbreaking moment as Joss stood in front of the little Volkswagen ready to leave. Bertram was sticking his head out the window and wagging his tail in anticipation, waiting for Joss to say goodbye.
This was no aching farewell of two star-crossed lovers. Star-crossed lovers didn’t get a look-in at Iluka, where everyone’s life was everyone’s business.
David and Daisy were there, plus almost every nursing-home patient and close to every Iluka resident as well. In these few short days Joss had won Iluka’s heart.
As they’d won his heart. He could see why Amy couldn’t leave.
‘Come back soon,’ they called, and he looked at Amy’s ashen face and thought not.
Not until some of those plans came to fruition.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
JOSS spent the first night in Bowra. First there was a long appointment with Henry, Malcolm’s father. To his relief Henry was no Malcolm. The old lawyer was intelligent and interested, and once he learned what Joss intended he couldn’t do enough to help.
‘God knows, that woman has suffered enough,’ the old man told him. ‘When I think of how my stupid son has treated her… And now there’s Charlotte, of all women. I know Charlotte-she’s the daughter of friends of mine. How the hell he managed to keep their relationship secret…
‘By the way, you needn’t worry about Charlotte,’ the old man added grimly. ‘I’ll see to it that Malcolm marries the girl if that’s what she wants. And if she decides not to-and who could blame her? Well, Malcolm will provide for her anyway. He’ll do it if I personally have to cut off his inheritance to see it done.’
‘I think we’ve had enough of inheritances,’ Joss told him, and the old man agreed.
‘Well, let’s sit down and see what can be done about this one. This idea of yours… I never thought- It’ll take courage.’
‘More than courage,’ Joss told him. ‘But do you think it can be done?’
Then there was a meeting with Doris, the Bowra doctor, who greeted him at first with suspicion and in the end with excitement.
‘If you can pull it off…’
Another person wishing him joy.
His father was working on the Iluka council members, and as Joss left Bowra and headed for Sydney he rang David on his cellphone, pulling over to the side of the road to take the call.
‘Here are the figures you asked for,’ his father told him. ‘Hell, Joss, it looks good. It looks great.’
‘And the bridge?’
‘We reckon we can do it.’
Now there was only the medical side to contend with, Joss thought as he steered the Volkswagen back onto the road. And the bank.
And the government authorities.
Only.
It was a month before Joss returned. He’d hoped it would be sooner but his plans had been extensive. No half-measures would do and he wanted to be sure.
Now he was as sure as he could be. The old lawyer in Bowra was chuckling to himself in huge delight. Amy’s stepfather would be turning in his grave, he decreed, and he couldn’t think of a better fate for the man.
Joss’s father had taken the train to Sydney and was following behind in the pink Volkswagen. Joss was driving something better.
The rebuilding of the bridge hadn’t been started yet-they still needed to use the ferry-but once the work started Amy would guess what the plan was and he wanted to be the one who did the telling. He was as sure as he could be that they could pull this thing off. It was time she was told.
So Joss put his brand-new Range Rover-with a strange new sign on the driver’s door-on the ferry, and then drove it around the cliffs where he’d crashed a month before and pulled up outside the Iluka nursing home. Bertram was out of the car the moment he opened the door, flying in to find all the friends he’d made on their last visit.
Joss followed.
Amy was in her office. She heard the twittering from the living room, she heard the mah-jong set clatter as it hit the floor, and then the big red dog burst into her office. He came bounding up to greet her, his paws landed on her shoulders and she darned near fell over.
Bertram!
David will have brought him back from Sydney, she told herself, fighting down the sudden surge of stupid hope. David and Daisy had told her they were going to Sydney to collect the Volkswagen. What could be more sensible than them bringing the dog back home for a visit?
Joss wouldn’t be here.
She glanced out the window to see a gleaming new Range Rover parked at the entrance. It had a sign on the door. ILUKA
HEALTH RESORT.
It didn’t make sense.
But before she could fully take it in, Joss was standing in the doorway. He had an absurd expression of hope on his face, like he was Bertram and he wasn’t sure whether he’d be kicked or hugged.
‘Joss…’
Her voice faltered. She’d made such resolutions. He’d come back to visit his f
ather occasionally, she’d told herself, and she had to greet him as a friend. Nothing more.
But he was still looking at her, his expression was just the same and it was too much. She was across the room and hugging him, kissing and being kissed, welcoming him with all the love in her heart. ‘Oh, Joss.’
‘Amy.’ He was beaming and beaming, putting her away from him so he could take her all in. ‘You haven’t changed a bit.’
‘You’ve only been away for a month.’
‘I thought you might be pregnant.’ There was a gasp behind them and Joss’s beam widened. ‘Hi, Kitty.’
‘H-Hi.’ The secretary rose on feet that were decidedly unsteady. She was choking on laughter. ‘Pregnant, huh?’
‘I am not,’ Amy told him indignantly. ‘After one night-what do you think you are?’
‘You reckon it’ll take more than a night? What a good thing I’m back.’
‘Joss…’
‘I’ll leave you to it, shall I?’ Kitty managed, and sidled out of the door. She very carefully didn’t close the door behind her.
‘Amy.’ Joss kissed her again and from outside the door there was a collective sigh. Iluka’s residents en masse.
‘Um…’ Somehow she pushed him away.
‘Um?’ He was smiling down at her, with the smile that had the capacity to make her heart do handsprings all on its own. ‘Is that all you can think of to say?’
But she was recovering, just. Friends. She had to greet him as a friend. What she was feeling was the way of insanity.
‘Joss, I can’t…’
‘You can’t what?’
‘Love you.’ There. The thing was said, She waited for him to take it on board and step back.
He did no such thing.
‘You can’t love me?’
‘No.’
‘But the future I’ve planned is founded on just that.’
‘What?’
‘The fact that you love me.’ He looked deeply concerned. ‘Are you sure you can’t? If you try very hard?’
‘Joss…’ She was torn between tears and laughter. It was so good to see him again. It was wonderful.
‘Maybe you can just pretend,’ he told her. ‘You see, I don’t think I can stay here as Medical Director of Iluka Health Services if I don’t have a wife to support me. A man of such importance needs a wife.’ He was grinning at her like a fool. ‘All those opening ceremonies, all that ribbon-cutting-a man needs a wife, if only to hold his handbag.’
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