The Other Side of Us (Harlequin Superromance)

by Sarah Mayberry

  He closed his eyes, unable to bear her steady, loving regard. He didn’t feel very lovable right now.

  His thoughts roamed as he lay in the darkness. To Flinders and back, but always circling around Mackenzie. Wondering what she was doing. How she was feeling. If Patrick had stepped in to console her.

  Oliver hadn’t heard from her since he’d sent the letter. Which was the way it should be. He’d spelled out in no uncertain terms why he’d left and why it was best that he’d gone. There was no way she could fail to understand that she was better off without him.

  Heartily sick of himself, he reached for his iPod and called up a playlist. He listened to the heartfelt lyrics of Crowded House and Paul Kelly and Peter Gabriel and consoled himself with the notion that maybe he’d get a decent song out of all this.

  Pretty thin gruel.

  The street outside grew noisy as the day started—car doors slamming, engines firing, the roar of the garbage truck. He contemplated getting out of bed, but there was no great rush. Rex didn’t want him back at the studio for another few days, since there was still time left on the freelancer’s contract.

  Oliver had nowhere to go, no one expecting him, nothing to do. If he wanted to, he could stay in bed all day thinking about how he’d missed out on something amazing because he’d met Mackenzie at the wrong time and place in his life.

  A car door slammed, followed by a single, low-pitched bark. Strudel stirred, lifting her head. She blinked, cocked her head, then leaped from the bed in a show of athleticism worthy of her pre-knocked-up days. Tail wagging furiously, she scrambled out of the bedroom and toward the front door.

  He was still staring after her in bemusement when the doorbell rang.

  Well, that explained Strudel’s antics, at least. Although she wasn’t normally so attuned to visitors.

  He got up and grabbed the pair of jeans he’d flung over the end of the bed last night. He had a fair idea he was a far cry from his usual groomed self—unshaved jaw, bed head, stained T-shirt—but anyone who called this early could take him as they found him.

  Strudel was whimpering and scratching at the door when he joined her, so excited she was trembling.

  “Calm down. It’s probably someone selling raffle tickets.”

  Then he opened the door and found himself looking into Mackenzie’s intense blue eyes. She scanned him head to toe a couple times, then a slow, tremulous smile curved her mouth.

  “You’re alive, then. That’s a good start,” she said.

  Mr. Smith was at her feet, enjoying an intense sniff fest with Strudel. Oliver tried to find something to say but his mind was a blank.

  Mackenzie solved the problem by stepping forward and slipping her arms around him. She lay her head on his chest and held him tightly, her eyes closed. She felt so right, so good against him that he couldn’t stop himself from returning the embrace. She turned her head and pressed a kiss to his chest, her arms tightening around him even more.

  After a long moment they both loosened their grip and Mackenzie took a small step backward and laid her palm along his jaw.

  “How are you? Are you okay?” she asked.

  There was so much tenderness and compassion in her touch and her voice that he was embarrassed to feel the prick of tears.

  “I’m fine.”

  Her gaze searched his intently. “Are you? Really? Because I’m not. I miss you like crazy. I think about you all the time. I want to know what you’re doing, how you’re feeling. I want to be with you.”

  His heart did something weird in his chest, banging against his rib cage as though it wanted out.

  “Mackenzie...”

  “Don’t tell me that you don’t feel the same, because I know you do. I know you feel as connected to me as I do to you. I know you’ve been dreaming about me. I know you love me, Oliver, because I love you so much it hurts.” She blinked away tears.

  “Don’t cry,” he said.

  He couldn’t stand to see her unhappy. Especially when he knew it was his fault.

  “Right now, that is not an option.”

  “Nothing has changed, Mackenzie. Nothing I put in that letter has gone away.”

  “I don’t care.”

  He laughed, the sound hollow and hard. “That’s because you don’t know how screwed up I am.”

  “I don’t care.”

  She was so brave, appearing on his doorstep, her heart in her hands. Offering to take him on, no matter what.

  “Maybe I’m not as strong as you,” he said quietly.

  “Because it’s scary trusting someone again?”

  He swallowed the last of his pride. She deserved the truth.

  “Yes.”

  She caught one of his hands in both of hers. Her eyes were brimming as she looked at him. “I understand. I understand that you need time. I understand that what happened between us wasn’t on your agenda. I understand that there might be some rocky times ahead, for both of us. But I’m still standing here.” She held his gaze, her chin tilted in challenge. “And I still love you. And I’m not going to stop loving you. It’s taken me nearly forty freaking years to find a man who makes me feel the way you do and I am not going to let that slip away because you want to spare me what you think are the worst parts of yourself.

  “So be afraid. Be angry. Be jealous. Be possessive. Be whatever you need to be. But please, let me come along for the ride. I promise I will hang in there with you. I promise you that there is far, far more good between us than there will ever be bad. I promise you that your heart will always be safe with me. Always.”

  Her hands were trembling as she pressed a kiss to the back of his hand.

  “All I ask is that you don’t shut me out. Let me walk beside you. Let me be there for you. Let me love you.”

  He’d never cried in front of a woman in his life, but apparently there was a first time for everything. He blinked and turned his head to wipe his face on his shoulder. Then he hauled her into his arms and held her so tightly his shoulders cracked.

  “I love you. I don’t want to hurt you,” he said fiercely.

  “I know. I don’t want to hurt you, either. I figure if we’re both trying, if we’re both careful, we’re in with a pretty good chance. Don’t you think?”

  She pulled back to gauge his response and he saw that she was crying in earnest, too.

  “It kills me when you cry,” he said.

  “I can’t even begin to tell you what it does to me when you do.” She captured his face in both her hands, brushing his tears away with her thumbs. “Don’t be afraid of me, of us, Oliver. Give us a chance.”

  He wrapped his hands around the fine bones of her wrists. “Do you honestly think I have anywhere near the strength to walk away from you twice?”

  She smiled. “Thank God.”

  She kissed him then, her body straining toward his. He let go of her wrists and wrapped his arms around her and lifted her off her feet as they kissed. She laughed against his mouth, her arms circling his neck.

  “I love you, Mackenzie,” he said.

  The words felt so good in his mouth.

  “At the risk of repeating myself, thank God.” She kissed him, hard, then glanced over his shoulder. “What are the odds that there’s a bed in this house somewhere?”

  “Very high.”

  “What are the odds I might get to inspect it anytime in the next sixty seconds?”

  “Even higher.”

  She gave a whoop as he bent and picked her up in a firefighter’s hold.

  “Oh, yeah. This was worth a trip to Sydney,” she said as he strode down the hall to his bedroom.

  The dogs skittered after them, excited by all the noise, dancing back and forth. He turned into his bedroom and let Mackenzie fall onto the bed as gently as he could. Then he went to the door and whistled the dogs away from the bed.

  “Outside, now,” he said.

  Strudel gave him a wounded look before slinking into the hallway, Mr. Smith trailing after her. Oliver
kicked the door shut and reached for the hem of his T-shirt, pulling it over his head.

  Mackenzie propped herself on her elbows and watched him undress, her cheeks flushed, her hair spiky on one side.

  “Worried about having an audience, huh?”

  “Worried your dog will pick up some new tricks. He’s already got enough moves.”

  He shucked his jeans and moved toward the bed, impatient to be skin to skin with her again. Needing the rightness of it.

  “You missed me,” she said, her gaze dropping to his thighs.

  “Like crazy. Take your clothes off.”

  They undressed her together, his hands caressing each inch of skin as it was exposed. Finally they were lying chest to chest, hip to hip. The warmth of her supple body against his was like a benediction. He rubbed his cheek against hers and closed his eyes and simply lived in the moment, savoring her.

  There were a lot of things that could go wrong between them. They still had to sort out who lived where. He needed to negotiate his divorce. She needed to rekindle her career.

  A warm certainty came over him as he felt the rise and fall of her chest against his. It might get complicated. There might be days when there was more shade than light. But all of that was manageable. All that truly mattered was Mackenzie loved him, and he loved her.

  He figured it was a pretty solid starting point. And then some.

  “Those new tricks you mentioned...” Mackenzie murmured near his ear.

  He smiled. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you patience is a virtue?”

  “Virtue is highly overrated.”

  She wrapped her arms and legs around him and proceeded to prove her point in the best possible way.

  EPILOGUE

  Two years later

  THE SCREEN DOOR SLAMMED behind Mackenzie as she let herself into the house. She could hear music playing in the kitchen and she hastened her step, buzzing with anticipation. She couldn’t wait to show Oliver what she had in her purse.

  The dogs must have heard the door because she was barely halfway down the long hall when they came running to greet her, Tinkerbell leading the charge. To be fair, neither Mr. Smith nor Strudel had much of a chance to beat her, Tinkerbell’s long legs giving her a distinct advantage. That was what came of having a Doberman for a father.

  As always, Mackenzie found herself grinning like a loon as Tinkerbell butted her big, black head into Mackenzie’s belly, demanding an ear scratch. For as long as she lived, Mackenzie would never forget the day Strudel had given birth to Tinkerbell and her three siblings, all of whom had long since found good homes. She could still recall in vivid detail how stunned both she and Oliver had been when they inspected Strudel’s offspring and discovered that instead of long, thin dachshund bodies, courtesy of Mr. Smith, they had huge feet and pure black fur.

  Oliver had been very quiet for a few minutes before admitting that before he packed up his wagon and drove south to Flinders, Strudel had been hanging out with Brutus, the Doberman who lived two streets over. Mackenzie had waited until the vet had confirmed their observation that Strudel had, indeed, produced four good-size Doberman-Schnauzer cross puppies before suggesting that Oliver might owe Mr. Smith an apology. A really big one.

  To his credit, Oliver hadn’t hesitated, but every now and then Mackenzie liked to remind him of the many lectures he’d visited upon poor Mr. Smith leading up to Strudel whelping. In part because Oliver always came up with new and novel and hilarious ways to express his regret.

  Dogs hard on her heels, Mackenzie entered the vast living area at the rear of their new home to find Oliver busy making dinner. Even though she was eager to share her news, she paused for a moment to appreciate the scene—her big, bad man, elbow-deep in spices and herbs, poring over a recipe book as though it held the key to life itself. He wore his hair a little shorter these days, but he hadn’t lost one iota of the appeal of the man who had knocked on her door two years ago. In fact, he’d only grown more appealing.

  Once the divorce had been finalized eighteen months ago, he’d lost the tight look around his mouth, and the crease between his eyebrows had eased. The laugh lines in his face had taken over, and the inherent warmth and goodness and humor in him was now evident in every smile, every glance, every gesture.

  God, she was lucky.

  Never in a million years did she think she would say that about herself. Not after the accident. She’d counted herself supremely unlucky to have suffered that terrible year of pain and uncertainty. But without the crash and recovery, she wouldn’t have met Oliver, she wouldn’t have been ready for him, and she certainly wouldn’t have appreciated him. She wouldn’t have rediscovered Mary and her own passion for documentaries, either, or developed a growing appreciation for simply stopping and enjoying her life instead of sprinting toward the next finishing line.

  Oliver glanced up, one finger remaining in the book to mark his place in the recipe. “Hey.” A slow, sexy smile curved his mouth.

  A delicious warmth unfurled in her belly and chest at the sight of that smile.

  Yeah, she was lucky. The luckiest woman alive.

  “How was your day?” he asked as she moved to his side and lifted her face for his kiss.

  His arms came around her, pulling her against his chest. She inhaled his familiar smell and made a “more, please” sound when he started to lift his head. After a moment she pulled away. He was in the middle of cooking dinner, after all, and they were no longer in the honeymoon stage of their relationship. She would give him another five minutes, ten tops, before she dragged him off to the bedroom to have her wicked way with him.

  “My day was good. It’s better now, of course.”

  “Naturally.”

  She gave him a gentle nudge with her elbow in response to his teasing. “What are you cooking?”

  “I’m attempting to make a marinade for the chicken I bought for dinner.”

  “Yum.”

  He cocked his head a little. “Why are you looking so bright-eyed and bushy-tailed?”

  She pushed her hair behind her ear. It wasn’t quite back to its former swishy glory, but it was nearly to her shoulders now. Oddly, it had grown back with a pronounced wave in it since the accident. She was still trying to decide if this was a good thing or a bad thing.

  Before she could say anything, Oliver’s smile became knowing. “You finished the edit, didn’t you?”

  “We finished the edit,” she confirmed.

  He reached for the tea towel hanging on the oven handle and dried his hands. “Let’s go, baby. Show me what you got.”

  She loved that he was as excited about this film as she was. Loved that he understood without her asking that she wanted to share this moment with him. The disc in her handbag was the culmination of years of work. It was the first thing she’d created that was entirely hers, born of her vision. And she couldn’t have done any of it without him by her side.

  “I love you,” she said.

  As always, the expression in his eyes grew soft as he looked at her. “I love you, too, sweetheart.”

  It hadn’t been easy for them to get to this place. There had been times over the past two years when things had been tense and unhappy. She’d uprooted her life in Melbourne to come to Sydney, and they’d weathered what had turned out to be a messy divorce, thanks to Edie’s ever-changing demands and priorities.

  But Mackenzie and Oliver had made it. They’d purged the last of his past when they sold the house he’d shared with Edie, and three months ago they’d moved into this bigger, brighter house by the water in Rose Bay.

  In short, life was good. And it was only going to get better with this man by her side.

  Taking her hand, he led her into the living room. She slid the disc into the DVD player and they sat side by side on the couch as the screen filled with the credits for her Mary De Garis documentary. Clever, intricate guitar music accompanied the images flashing across the screen, underpinning the moody, slightly edgy vibe the production desi
gner had created.

  Oliver’s music, of course. It had taken her four whole months to convince him that she wasn’t “throwing him a bone,” as he called it, commissioning him to create original music for the documentary. It was only when she played him some of the alternative compositions she was considering and he understood how very wrong they all were for the project that he’d given in.

  The result, everyone agreed, was wonderful. Subtle, unassuming music that worked with the themes the documentary explored rather than declaring itself and demanding the spotlight. He’d helped give her project heart, plucking at emotion when the narrative needed it, drumming with bravado when Mary was on the warpath, filling the blanks in the story with wordless emotion.

  Mackenzie slid her hand into his as the narrator’s voice rose above the music, accompanied by a series of images of turn-of-the-century Melbourne. A thrill raced down her spine as she watched the way it all effortlessly flowed together.

  After a few minutes, Oliver lifted her hand to his lips and pressed a kiss to her knuckles. She glanced at him.

  “It’s really good,” he said.

  “God, I hope so. I hope I’m not completely deluded after months of staring at this footage in the edit suite.”

  “You’re not deluded. You’re clever and talented and passionate and committed. And you did it, sweetheart. You did it.”

  Tears filled her eyes. “Because of you. Everything is because of you, Oliver.”

  Because he believed in her. Because he loved her. Because he rubbed her shoulder and hips when they were sore and made sure she ate properly and forced her to sleep when she needed it. Because he was a true life partner, someone who was in the trenches with her, fighting at her side.

  Because he was Oliver.

  He didn’t say anything, simply pulled her into his arms. They rested their cheeks together, arms tight around each other. For a moment, her love for him was an ache in her chest, a tangible thing.

  “Once upon a time, I used to think I was happy,” Oliver said after a moment of perfect silence.

  She drew back a little so she could look into his eyes. “And now?”