Bushfire Bride

by Marion Lennox

  Good grief!

  It was as much as Hugo could do not to blush. He swallowed, tried to think of something to say, couldn’t, so did the only thing he could think of.

  He dived straight under the water and left them alone.

  He stayed out of their way for about a quarter of an hour. It’s the equivalent of a cold shower, he told himself, and that was what he needed. He swam and he swam, using the rhythm of his strokes to try and settle his brain.

  What was happening to him? Rachel was a married woman. She was a colleague who’d been trapped here by the fire. As soon as the wind changed and the fires burned back on themselves she’d be out of here. He had no business to think of her as he was thinking.

  He had no choice. He was definitely thinking.

  He swam.

  It had to end some time. It had been a huge day and a man could only swim so far, regardless of what demons were driving him.

  Toby and Rachel had taken themselves up the beach and were engaged in building the world’s biggest sandcastle. As Hugo towelled himself dry and strolled up the beach to join them, Rachel shifted back to admire their handiwork. She glanced up at his face-which he was still trying to control-and she chuckled.

  ‘Hey, don’t get your knickers in a twist by a comment on a six-pack.’ She grinned. ‘It’s what we women put up with all the time. That was the female equivalent of a wolf whistle.’

  He stared. ‘Sorry?’

  Her smile widened as his discomfiture deepened. ‘Sorry yourself. OK, I’m sorry about the six-pack remark but you did get personal first.’

  ‘So I did,’ he said faintly. ‘So I guess I’m sorry, too.’

  ‘Actually, I’m not sorry,’ she said with a sideways, very thoughtful look. ‘For the expression on your face-it was well worth it.’

  Had it been worth it? He stared down at her and she smiled back, enigmatic and lovely and thoroughly confusing.

  It couldn’t last. He might be directionless but Rachel at least was focused. Toby was lifting a football from the bottom of the picnic basket and was kicking it across the sand without much hope.

  ‘Given up on the sandcastle?’ Rachel asked him.

  ‘Yeah.’ The little boy looked down at his plastic football and sighed. ‘I brought this with me tonight ’cos Bradley Drummond says I can’t drop-kick. I gotta learn how to drop-kick and Dad can’t drop-kick for nuts.’

  ‘You can’t drop-kick?’ Rachel stared at Hugo, amazed.

  ‘I played basketball,’ he said in explanation, and she looked at him as if it wasn’t an explanation at all.

  ‘I can’t believe it. A man who plays basketball… What use is a six-pack in basketball?’

  ‘Hey!’

  ‘Say no more.’ She wiped her hands on non-existent trousers, and wriggled her shoulders-a player prepared to launch into a tackle. ‘A basketball player… Good grief. Toby, lad, give me the ball.’

  ‘Can you drop-kick?’ he asked shyly, and she nodded.

  ‘I was taught by the best. My husband was the world’s absolutely top drop-kicker. Or so he told me and who am I to doubt it? And he taught me.’

  ‘Gee,’ Toby, said, impressed.

  ‘Gee is right. So there you go. Drop-kick lessons coming up. And you, Dr McInnes, stop worrying and have some dinner,’ she told him. ‘You’ve hardly eaten anything.’ She flashed him a look that was almost a warning. ‘Sausages and lamingtons and grapes. Eat. For heaven’s sake, Hugo, let’s keep life simple.’

  Keep life simple? He didn’t know what she was talking about.

  Or maybe he did, but he sure as heck didn’t want to admit it.

  It had gone way past being simple but at least it was peaceful. Miraculously his cellphone stayed silent. It might be the calm before the storm but for these few hours there seemed no medical need, and no need at all for them to rush their picnic and head for home.

  With their drop-kick lessons completed to their mutual satisfaction, Rachel and Toby turned their attention back to food. They polished off sausages with gusto.

  ‘It’s our second dinner,’ Rachel declared, ‘and it’s much nicer the second time around.’ They ate their fill of lamingtons and finished off with a Thermos of coffee, with lemonade for Toby, and then Toby snuggled down on beach towels beside them and drifted toward sleep. One six-year-old had had a truly excellent day.

  ‘We don’t do this often enough,’ Hugo said ruefully, running his fingers through Toby’s sand-and salt-stiff hair. But he wasn’t totally focused on his son. He was still letting Rachel’s words drift around his head. My husband was the world’s absolutely top drop-kicker. He didn’t like it.

  He didn’t want to think about Rachel’s husband.

  And it seemed Rachel’s thoughts were travelling on a similar route.

  ‘Christine doesn’t like the beach?’

  ‘Christine?’ His gaze jerked to hers, startled. ‘What’s it got to do with Christine?’

  ‘She is the lady you intend to marry,’ Rachel said gently, and watched his face.

  He said nothing.

  Christine… That relationship had been on the backburner for so long that he hardly knew. When had it started? This assumption that he’d end up with his sister-in-law?

  He didn’t know when it had begun. She’d just been there. Even when Beth had been alive, Christine had done the organising, acting as go-between in their increasingly turbulent marriage, suggesting, steering…

  Oh, there had been nothing untoward in their relationship during the marriage. There was nothing untoward in it now. It was just drifting…

  Toward marriage? Maybe. And why? Because it was easier. Because the town was waiting.

  Christine was waiting.

  ‘It’s been six years,’ Rachel said softly. ‘Isn’t it about time you married the woman?’

  ‘Who told you we were getting married?’

  ‘Christine did,’ Rachel told him. She glanced down at Toby who was sleeping now, deeply unconscious. ‘Tonight. When I told her we were coming to the beach. I was told in no uncertain terms to keep myself to myself. I’ve never actually been given the scarlet woman treatment before, but I copped it tonight.’

  For heaven’s sake. Hugo’s face set in anger. Of all the stupid… She had no right.

  Did she have a right?

  He hadn’t given her reason to think otherwise, he admitted to himself. Lately, Christine had taken to kissing him goodbye, and a few weeks ago he’d let himself kiss her back. Not as he’d kissed her in the past, brother-in-law to sister-in-law, but more. Man to woman.

  Hell, why?

  He knew why. He’d needed to so much. Just to feel the touch of a woman in his arms.

  But it had still felt wrong, even though Beth had been dead these six years. So he’d pulled back. Apologised. But Christine had smiled and he’d known that she was waiting.

  And he hadn’t said no. He hadn’t said it could never work. In truth, he’d been wondering…

  Six years was a long time and this was a tiny town. In this confined environment he couldn’t look at a woman without that woman getting the wrong idea. Affairs were impossible. He was so damned lonely and he was hungry…

  He wasn’t hungry for Christine, he conceded to himself, looking at the woman in front of him and accepting what was becoming clearer by the minute. He was hungry for Rachel.

  Rachel was unavailable. What had she said about her husband? The world’s absolutely top drop-kicker… There was a wealth of affection in the way she’d said it that had been unmistakable.

  Maybe Christine was all there was.

  ‘So you are going to marry her?’

  Rachel was watching him with the air of an inquisitive sparrow. Furious, with himself as well as her, he started to haul the picnic things together.

  ‘I think it’s time we took Toby home.’

  ‘Toby’s asleep. He can’t be any more asleep at home than he is right now. And you haven’t answered the question.’

  ‘It�
�s none of your business.’

  ‘Mmm, but I thought we’d agreed we’d already been impolite. We may as well keep going, don’t you think?’

  ‘No,’ he said, goaded, and she smiled.

  ‘You started it.’

  He had, he conceded, with his talk of her scarring. But he had no intention of continuing.

  Rachel had no intention of stopping.

  ‘Toby doesn’t like Christine much,’ she told him. ‘Neither does Myra. Do you think Christine would soften with the brocade-remembering-Beth thing if you married?’

  ‘Look-’

  ‘I wouldn’t want to live with it.’ She stretched her legs out full length, admiring her sandy toes. She had beautiful crimson toenails.

  Very distracting toenails.

  ‘I can see why you’d want to, of course!’ she conceded. ‘She’s lovely. Is Christine very like your wife was?’

  ‘Will you cut it out?’ He was half laughing, half angry. ‘Why don’t we talk about you for a change?’

  ‘Like what about me?’ She was still admiring her toenails.

  ‘Like what is it between you and your husband? You were fighting like cat and dog at the weekend. It can’t be much of a marriage.’

  The laughter left her face. She’d been teasing him-it had been light-hearted banter-but suddenly there was no banter left. There was a long silence. Then…

  ‘No,’ she said at last, and she spoke so softly he had to strain to hear what she was saying. ‘No, I don’t have much of a marriage.’

  He shouldn’t go further. He should stop this potentially hurtful conversation right now.

  He couldn’t. The devil-or something-was driving him. He had to push.

  ‘Yet you’re criticising me for potentially making a loveless marriage?’

  ‘Whoa…’ Her eyes flashed at that. ‘I didn’t say a word about a loveless marriage,’ she retorted, spirit re-entering her voice with a vengeance. ‘I may not have much of a marriage but I surely went into it with love.’

  ‘Yet you want out?’

  The conversation had become suddenly so intense he could hardly breathe. Hell, how had this happened? He watched her face and her eyes were blind, as if she was consumed by panic.

  ‘I’m out now, aren’t I?’ she whispered. ‘Dear God, I shouldn’t be, but I’m out.’

  He didn’t know what was happening. He didn’t understand. All he knew was that he’d hurt her somehow, and hurt her badly. ‘Rachel, don’t look like that.’

  ‘Look like what?’

  ‘Like there’s something inside you that’s tearing apart.’

  ‘I’m not… It’s not…’

  Her hands were fumbling, trying to collect the picnic things together, but he could see she wasn’t thinking of what she was doing. Her hands weren’t connected to her thoughts and her eyes were still so pain-filled that he found himself reaching out, grasping her fingers between his. Holding…

  She didn’t pull away.

  She didn’t move.

  How long they stayed there he could never afterwards tell. The night was creeping in through the smoky haze. The sun had slipped unnoticed, behind the mountains, behind the distant fires. The beach was deserted.

  All was still, apart from the soft hush, hush, hush of the waves slipping into shore, one after the other.

  Endless.

  Time was nothing. There was nothing. This had started as comfort-hadn’t it?-but now it was more. Deeper. For this moment there was just this man and this woman and a meeting that neither could understand, that neither wanted, that simply was.

  Still their hands held. It was their eyes doing the talking, searching, locked to each other and discovering in each a link. A bond. An aching need and a knowledge that in each other pain could be assuaged.

  The moment stretched on.

  He should break his hold. He should release her hands, pull back…

  But still his eyes searched hers and with every moment that passed the need to do more became increasingly compulsive.

  Inescapable.

  One man. One woman. One moment.

  He pulled her into his arms and he kissed her.

  What was she doing here? Rachel hardly knew. All she knew was that the moment Hugo’s fingers touched hers, her mind shut down to everything that wasn’t him.

  Toby was asleep. The dogs were far off, fruitlessly chasing gulls in endless circles around the beach. There were no witnesses to what was happening here.

  There was no problem with witnesses. No one would gainsay her this pleasure. Dottie had told her that as she’d packed the gorgeous lingerie and pushed her out the door to what she’d thought would be a romantic weekend with Michael.

  Only it would never have worked. Even if Michael had been…nice, she could never have let him near her. The guilt had still been with her. The overriding bitterness at what could have been.

  But all of that was lost the moment Hugo’s hands touched hers. He pulled her into him and as his mouth claimed hers and as she melted effortlessly into him, all she felt was joy.

  Oh, the pleasure. The aching wonder. Eight years of sorrow and loneliness were all dispelled in this one kiss. In this meeting of bodies, one with the other.

  It was a kiss, but it was so much more than a kiss. It was a melting of barriers, a moving forward, a reaffirmation of life itself.

  She couldn’t pull away. She knew she should but she hadn’t the strength. Rachel, who’d been so strong for so long, was falling now as she hadn’t let herself ever fall. She’d been alone and now…she was home. She was where she belonged. Hugo was kissing her and she was moving from an old life into a new, like a butterfly emerging from a faded and torn chrysalis to begin a new life.

  Hugo.

  Life or death. Living or dying.

  I choose…life.

  The dogs disturbed them. The flock of gulls they’d been chasing finally wheeled out to sea. Delirious with excitement, the dogs came hurtling up the beach, soaking wet. They landed on the picnic rug and proceeded to shake what seemed gallons of seawater over everyone.

  Including Toby. He woke and whimpered a little. Hugo pulled away for an instant and it was enough. To let reality in.

  To let Rachel’s reality sink in.

  What was she doing?

  And there they all were-the old doubts, the fears and the loneliness and the endless future. They hadn’t disappeared. They’d been subsumed by the moment but they were still there.

  The pressure of Hugo’s mouth was still on her lips. She put her fingers up to touch them but Hugo was before her. Toby had stirred and settled, the dogs had wheeled away again and he was catching her fingers in his lovely big hands, and there was such a look of tenderness on his face that she must surely melt…

  ‘Rachel…’

  ‘No,’ she faltered, and pulled away. Reluctantly, he released her. He watched her, his eyes calm. Something had changed for him, too, she thought frantically. He knew.

  He couldn’t know. He mustn’t.

  ‘Rachel, what’s wrong?’

  ‘I’m married,’ she said, and there was such a blunt finality about the words that the look of tenderness shuttered down on his face as if it had never been.

  ‘You said…you wanted out.’

  ‘I didn’t.’ She was hauling herself together now-somehow. She had to get off this beach. She had to get away from this man.

  She had to leave.

  ‘I don’t want-’ he started, but she was before him.

  ‘Neither do I.’ She was close to tears. Here she was, lying again. She wanted Hugo so much that she was tearing apart and she could feel herself disintegrating. ‘I-it’s almost dark,’ she stammered. ‘You have to check Kim. I…I’m tired. I need my bed. Please, Hugo, can we go?’

  She rose and hauled her beach towel around herself like a shield. It was stupid. Nothing could protect her from what she was feeling. Nothing.

  ‘Can we go?’ she whispered again. ‘Please, Hugo. I don’t need this. I
can’t… I can’t.’

  And there was nothing for them to do but to leave.

  There was nothing for Hugo to do but to look at her with hungry eyes and a hopeless heart.

  Kim was fine when he arrived back at the hospital, but Hugo took his time with the injured teenager. He hardly knew why. Kim was deeply asleep. Her exhausted parents had finally decided to cease their vigil and leave their daughter in the nurses’ care. Hugo could have simply glanced at the observation chart and left, but instead he carefully checked the wound, unwinding the bandages and surveying his handiwork with care. David, the ginger-haired nurse who was in charge tonight, watched with thoughtful appreciation.

  ‘You know she’s fine. I checked the leg myself a couple of hours ago. No temp, the leg’s as pink as the other one, she’s having pain but it seems to be settling-even her parents are relaxing now. Why not you, Dr McInnes?’

  ‘I’m relaxing,’ Hugo snapped, and David grinned.

  ‘Yeah, and I’m a monkey’s uncle. You’re tense as all get-out. You’re not expecting any dramas here, are you?’

  Hugo looked down at Kim’s face. The fifteen-year-old was sleeping soundly, exhausted from the effects of trauma and relaxing deeply into the drugs he was using for pain-killing. She looked…fine. No, he wasn’t expecting any trauma here. Thanks to Rachel.

  What was Rachel’s story?

  Why did he need to know?

  ‘She’ll be OK,’ he managed, but David was still watching him.

  ‘You’re avoiding going home?’ David asked softly, and Hugo winced. Was he so transparent?

  ‘No.’

  But David didn’t believe him. He was a fine nurse and part of that was that he read people well. ‘There’s nothing here for you to do,’ he told Hugo, his eyes still thoughtful. ‘The last of the fire crews rang in half an hour ago. Because there’s no wind up on the ridge, there’s been no dramas at all-not even a bad case of smoke in the eyes. You can go home to bed, Dr McInnes.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘And you ought to.’ David was watching him with an intensity that Hugo found unnerving. ‘The forecast for tomorrow is horrible. If they don’t hold the firebreaks…’