This was torture.
Demeaning and ridiculous. He should have just put his foot down and excused himself instead of being sucked in by the plea in his mother’s face. Hadn’t he grown up to enough to realise that pleasing himself was more important than pleasing a parent?
Apparently not.
It wasn’t the best mind set to be in for following the directions of a girl who seemed to have life organised to deliver precisely what would please herself more than anyone else.
She was just so damn…joyful.
She wasn’t required to wear a uniform in this new position of hers and right now she was wearing some rather tight-fitting jeans and a white top that looked like it belonged to a gypsy. All ruffles and elastic, including a tight line under her breasts and a ruffle around the neckline that did nothing to hide her cleavage. She didn’t have to confine her hair either, but at least it was half-up and not that uncontrolled cascade of curls that had made his fingers itch the first time he’d seen it.
Or maybe it wasn’t any better. As Oliver gritted his teeth and followed the stupid stepping and clapping instructions, Bella suddenly whirled a quarter turn and her hair swirled with her. At least half of it was scraped back loosely from her face and pinned high on the back of her head with a sparkly clip. All Oliver could think now was how much better it would look if someone pulled that clip out and let the whole lot ripple over her shoulders and down her back. The back of that top was just as low as the front. He could see an expanse of smooth, golden-brown skin.
‘You forgot to clap,’ Bella admonished him, with a grin. ‘On every count of four, remember?’
Oliver froze in mid-step. He hadn’t wanted to do this in the first place. He needed time to himself to unwind and enjoy being in his own home, doing what he chose to do.
He really didn’t want to be dancing—if this silly stepping really counted as such an activity.
He also really, really didn’t want to be aware of any physical attraction that his mother’s nurse might possess.
And now he was being told he wasn’t doing it right? That he wasn’t performing up to expectations? Did Bella share his mother’s opinion that he was stuffy? The way she was smiling right now suggested that something was certainly amusing her.
That did it. With a look that had been known to send junior nurses fleeing his operating theatre in tears, Oliver turned on his heel and left the room.
* * *
‘Forty-nine....fifty…’ With an agonised grunt, Oliver let the weights on the bench press drop with a resounding clank.
He was dripping with sweat. He’d put the weights up on every machine and driven himself harder than he ever had but the tension he was feeling hadn’t gone away one bit.
Maybe a run would do the trick. The state-of-the-art treadmill in the corner of gym could be adjusted in both speed and incline until it felt like you were trying to run up a cliff side. It was also positioned so that you could look out at the sea while you were running but Oliver wasn’t even aware of the glorious view this evening.
He was still angry at having been pushed so far out of his comfort zone.
He’d hated it.
Or maybe he hadn’t and that was the real problem here.
Did he really come across to everyone as being stuffy?
Did he care?
Maybe he did. Bella was the opposite of stuffy. She was the kind of person he’d always envied when he’d been at school. The popular type who always seemed to be having fun. Normal rules didn’t seem to apply to those golden people. They were the rebels that got away with breaking the rules. The ones who seemed to lead a charmed life.
Oliver’s breath was coming in such short, painful gasps he was forced to reduce the incline on the treadmill.
The only rebellion he’d ever attempted had been to go to medical school instead of the position waiting for him in one of his father’s über-successful businesses. That had nearly been enough to make public the sham of the Dawsons’ happy family image so the pressure had been on to prove himself after that. Not only to succeed but to do it so well that nobody could point a finger and say that his father had been right in his opposition.
And that had meant keeping himself apart from the other medical students. The ones that got drunk and partied to relieve the stress. The ones that competed to see who got the prettiest nurses first.
Nurses like Bella.
With a groan, Oliver let the treadmill wind down. He stripped off his sweat-sodden
T-shirt, his trainers and his socks but he left his boxer shorts on. A few rapid strides and he could dive into the welcome coolness of the indoor pool. When he surfaced, he immediately began a strong overarm stroke that pulled him quickly to the other end of the pool. Then he ducked and rolled, using his feet to push him off the side to begin the next length.
And still the tension bubbled inside his head.
He was stuffy. Good grief…he was only thirty-six years old but he was middle-aged to the nth degree. Had been since God knew when.
Had he entered a middle-aged mentality when he’d been in his teens? When he’d decided that both his father’s personality and his behaviour simply wasn’t acceptable?
Or had it been even earlier than that? When he’d seen that his mother needed protection?
Needed genuine love.
Oliver swam another length. And another. Maybe he needed to dry himself off and go and sit in the summer house for a while to finally get rid of this unpleasant feeling of…what was it?
Frustration?
A dislike of who he was?
No. It was more a sense of having missed out on something important.
That he was still missing out.
And not knowing quite what it was that he was missing out on.
* * *
The spa pool was set into the gym set-up on the lower floor of the Dawson mansion.
Lady Dorothy had taken some persuasion to don a bathing suit and start some water therapy but the visiting physio had recommended it and Bella had gone home to Kate’s house last night to fetch her own bathing suit so that she could do more than supervise from the edge of the pool.
Finally, she had Lady Dorothy seated safely in the pool.
‘Don’t get a fright,’ she warned. ‘I’m going to turn the jets on now.’
The pool hummed into life and the pressure of the moving water increased around them.
‘Good heavens!’ Lady Dorothy exclaimed. ‘This is…extraordinary.’
Bella blinked. ‘Haven’t you been in a spa pool before?’
‘Never. This is Oliver’s playroom, not mine.’
Bella took another long glance around them. Yep. She was still blown away by what looked like the ultimate home fitness area. The room was vast. It probably took up the lower floor of this whole wing. The pool had to be fifty feet long and the dark blue tiling made the water match what she could see of the ocean through the windows.
No waves, though. The pool lay like a giant mirror, with faint curls of steam rising from its glassy surface. Both the swimming pool and the spa pool were at a level that made them in line with the expanse of the sea. At the far end of the pool was a treadmill that was also positioned for the view.
An infinity treadmill. Who knew?
‘Not much of a playroom,’ she said aloud. ‘It looks like a torture chamber with all those machines. Oliver must be very fit.’
‘His father got terribly overweight,’ Lady Dorothy responded. ‘That’s what caused his heart attack, of course. Just one of the attributes Oliver didn’t want to emulate, I expect.’
Bella was surprised again. What a cryptic thing to say. She really wanted to ask what else about his father he hadn’t liked but, for once, she paid heed to the warning bell.
She’d already g
one too far, hadn’t she, pushing Oliver with that line dancing the other night? He’d been absolutely furious with her and she had been keeping her head down and avoiding him ever since. When he came to visit his mother in the evenings, she made sure that there was some urgent task she simply had to get done. And last night she’d been out for hours, having dinner with Kate and Connor.
She’d told them about making St Patrick’s head neurosurgeon line dance and Kate had shaken her head.
‘You’ll get yourself into trouble, Bella. You might lose this job if you’re not careful.’
‘I won’t. Lady Dorothy loves me and she’s doing really well. I’m right on top of supervising her diabetes. Oliver said that he’s never seen her blood-glucose levels under such tight control.’
‘Oh…Oliver now, is it?’
‘Not to his face,’ Bella had to confess. ‘I haven’t got the nerve but it would seem silly to call him Mr Dawson in his own home, wouldn’t it?’
‘I’d check first,’ Kate advised. ‘And possibly not while you’re making him do something as embarrassing as line dancing.’
The cringe factor was still there. With a sigh, Bella forced herself to focus.
‘Put your arms out so that your fingers are in the bubbles,’ she told Lady Dorothy. ‘Then we’ll see how we go with your exercises.’
‘Do you think I should take my necklace off, dear? I’m a bit worried about what the chemicals might do to the stones. I’m sure I can smell chlorine.’
‘I don’t think it will hurt your necklace.’
‘I rather not risk it. Could you do the clasp for me, please, Bella?’
‘Sure.’ Bella unclipped the string of polished garnets that was one of Lady Dorothy’s favourites. So much so that her new employer was planning to measure the success of her progress by when she would be able to wear the matching ring again.
And Bella had every intention of helping her to do just that. That was what she was there for and it would be best if she stopped thinking about Oliver Dawson at all.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t that easy. Even knowing that she had infuriated him didn’t seem to be enough to quell the temptation to go there again. Maybe it enhanced it, even.
It was a personality flaw, wasn’t it? To be scared of something but drawn to the danger of it?
Exactly the kind of situation that had got Bella into trouble all her life. Doing something again when she knew she shouldn’t because she just had to find out what would happen if she did.
Honestly, she should have grown out of it by now because she’d had plenty of examples when the thing that had happened had been bad.
Like all the toys she had broken as a child because she’d just had to bend them in an impossible direction or see if they could survive being dropped out of a window or something. In the end, her father had been so angry her pocket money had been stopped until she learned better sense.
And what about when she’d broken her arm falling out of that tree when she’d gone out on a branch that obviously didn’t have the strength to support her?
Or the time she’d nearly drowned and the lifeguards had had to rescue her from the hole in the surf with its lethal swirl of competing currents?
That had been at Piha.
Now, there was a distraction. Bella helped Lady Dorothy flex and straighten her fingers in the hot current of moving water. The upcoming wedding that was to happen at Piha beach.
‘That’s fantastic,’ she encouraged Lady Dorothy. ‘Look, they’re much straighter than they were yesterday. Can you do your wrist exercises too?’
The movements were almost routine now. Lady Dorothy had been right. They were learning together and Bella knew she was already far more qualified than she had been when she had been trying to help look after her nanna.
Which was such a shame because if Nanna were here now, she would be so excited about Kate’s wedding, which was only a few weeks away now.
Bella was excited.
So was Connor.
Even Lady Dorothy kept asking about how the plans for the beach wedding were going.
The only person who didn’t seem over the moon about it, Bella had decided last night, was Kate.
Which was odd. Disturbing, even. Connor hadn’t seemed to notice anything amiss but, in some ways, he didn’t know Kate as well as Bella did, did he?
She’d known her aunt since she’d been a small girl and Kate had been a troubled teen who had come from an appallingly abusive background. Her father had been a violent bastard and her mother had failed to protect Kate other than by sending her away to live with her much older brother’s family. And then her father had murdered her mother and been sent to prison for it!
Not that Bella had known that until recently but she had known that Kate had secrets. She’d always known that some things were tucked away and hidden so well that sometimes Bella was the only one who could see that locked door in Kate’s eyes. She’d seen the bone-deep sadness that could only be the aftermath of something really bad happening.
And she thought she’d seen it again last night for the first time in many years.
Maybe she was wrong. Bella hoped she was wrong but it needed thinking about, didn’t it?
And worrying about her aunt was the probably the only sure-fire way she could distract herself completely from thinking about Oliver.
If shades of the past were haunting Kate again it couldn’t have anything to do with her father because he was gone. Locked away so securely he would never see freedom again for as long as he lived.
Had Connor done something to remind Kate of her father?
No. Simply not possible. OK, Connor was big and powerful and wore leathers and rode a motorbike but if there was any propensity for violence it would have come out when he’d seen Kate being attacked by her father in the pathology lab that day.
A curl of shame always came with that memory for Bella. It had been her fault the situation had happened in the first place. She’d irresponsibly jumped in and arranged the meeting, thinking she could resolve old family issues, and it had led to disaster.
Well…not complete disaster. After all, it had been precisely that situation that had shown both Kate and Connor how much in love with each other they were and now here they were, planning their wedding and the rest of their lives together.
Lady Dorothy was wriggling her fingers as if she was playing a piano now.
‘They hardly hurt at all,’ she said happily.
‘Excellent. Let’s work on your wrists now.’
Bella helped with the movements but her thoughts were drawn back to the problem at hand. She needed to focus.
Pride in her part in bringing her beloved aunt and her lover to the point where they were sublimely happy was beside the point because Kate wasn’t so happy any more. And Bella was quite sure it wasn’t anything Connor might have said or done. He hadn’t shown any violence towards her grandfather in the lab that day when he’d clearly deserved it. No. He’d used his strength and his big body to shield Kate and protect her. So it couldn’t be that something had happened in their relationship to remind Kate of her past.
No way.
So it had to be something else.
But what?
CHAPTER SIX
‘EVERYTHING’S fine, Bella.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Of course I’m sure. Where’s this coming from?’
There was a short silence on the other end of the line. ‘Um…’ It wasn’t like Bella to sound so unsure of herself. ‘It’s just a feeling I got the other night and it won’t go away. Like you’re hiding something.’
Kate froze. If Bella suspected something, how long would it be before Connor did? She stopped sorting the papers on the desk in front of her and raised her head to stare through the gla
ss windows of her office into St Patrick’s busy pathology lab. No. She was sure Connor didn’t suspect anything. His lovemaking last night had been the usual mix of raw masculine power and the gentleness that could bring her to tears if she thought about it.
Like now. Kate had to blink hard.
‘Kate?’
‘I’m here.’ Kate cleared her throat and tried to swallow but her mouth felt strangely dry. The person she loved most in the world after Connor had to be her niece. The bond they had was unique and ran deep. It went back to a time when Kate had had dark secrets to hide and Bella was far too young to know about any of them. She knew more now but she still didn’t know everything. And she wasn’t going to, any more than Connor was.
Kate was starting a new life. A future that was more than anything she’d ever dreamed of. Marriage to a man she would die for. A man who, miraculously, seemed to love her just as much.
The past was gone. Or was it? Maybe that was why Bella was asking awkward questions. She’d known Kate a lot longer than Connor had so maybe she was tuned in at a different level. Something like panic opened its claws in Kate’s belly. She had to stop the direction of this conversation urgently. Before it did her head in and she said something that would blow the whole can of worms open.
‘I’m pretty busy, hon. Was there something in particular you wanted to talk about?’
She heard a sigh. ‘I’m not having a great day, I guess. I’ve been worried about you and—’
‘Well, you can stop worrying about me for a start.’ Kate interrupted firmly.
‘But…’ Clearly, Bella wasn’t going to be reassured that easily.
‘I don’t know what you think you’ve picked up, but it’s probably just a bit of pre-wedding jitters or something.’
‘Jitters? How can you have jitters when you’re getting married to Connor? He’s gorgeous. And he adores you. You adore him. You’re perfect for each other. If I’m half as lucky as you, then I’ll be happy.’
‘It’s getting close rapidly, that’s all.’ Maybe there was a way forward to be found here. A means of buying time? Softening the final blow that had to come?
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