‘But you knew your mother wasn’t like that,’ she protested, and saw Sam’s eyebrows rise.
‘Did I?’ He gave a helpless shrug. ‘I knew her as a mother, not as a teenager going out with boys. You know, because we talked about it often enough, that she flatly refused to tell me who my father was. Said she had her reasons. Then Ben drops his poison, not missing your dad in the list of candidates for my paternity, and your father turns around and pays my school fees at a private school. What was I supposed to think, Megan? What was I supposed to think?’
Meg shook her head.
‘Of my mother?’
Anguish bit into his words, hurting Meg almost more than she’d been hurt thirteen years ago.
Of course her father paying his school fees would have confirmed all Sam’s worst imaginings. Her own heart was racing at the idea that it could have been true, although she knew there must be more—that Sam must have finally found out some truth—because his kiss on the beach had been anything but brotherly.
She tried to think—tried to get her brain working—knowing there was something big she was missing here.
‘But your mother would have said something—said we shouldn’t see each other—if it had been my dad,’ she pointed out, and Sam turned, his face pale.
‘Unless she hadn’t known!’ he ground out, holding out his hands as if in supplication. ‘Can you imagine the hurt I did my mother when I accused her of that? When I refused to believe her when she assured me I could kiss any girl in the Bay without fear of incest? I hurt her, Meg, and kept on hurting her. Oh, we reached a kind of truce when we shifted down to Sydney, but I always knew she was pining for the Bay and selfishly believed it was a punishment she had to bear because she was so obdurate about not telling me.’
‘But her not telling you must simply have confirmed your worst fears,’ Meg whispered. ‘Confirmed your impression that she didn’t know!’
‘Exactly!’ He nodded, pacing restlessly around her chair and Benjie’s cot.
Meg stared at him, sure there should be something she could say to ease the pain his memories were causing. But it was late, and she was exhausted—physically and now emotionally—and her head was filled with cotton wool.
He saved himself, turning back towards her, the past wiped off his face—all expression wiped away. He’d always been good at hiding his feelings…
Too good!
‘You’re exhausted. I shouldn’t have brought all this up tonight of all nights but having started…’
‘I’m glad you told me,’ Meg managed, although she wasn’t sure it was the truth.
He nodded, bent to look at Benjie, rested the backs of his fingers lightly against the child’s cheek.
Meg could feel his pain and longed to comfort him but, not knowing how, could only reach out and touch him lightly on the back. But this was Sam—the old Sam—and that Sam deserved more of her. She stood up and slipped her arm around his shoulders so when he straightened and turned to face her, it seemed inevitable their lips would meet.
‘I’m so sorry, Sam,’ she murmured, feeling the words as they brushed across his lips.
He didn’t answer, but drew her close, taking solace, she hoped, in the warmth of her body as it pressed against his. Then the kiss deepened, and desire sneaked in to overwhelm the comfort and compassion that had been on offer. Desire fanned the embers of need deep within Meg’s body, setting them alight so heat raced through her blood.
‘Sam?’
His name, whispered softly against the corner of his mouth, asked a thousand questions, but Sam had no answers for any of them. All he knew was that he was kissing Meg again, and somehow things might be coming right between them.
He pressed his lips against her eyelids, first one, then the other, kissed her nose, and let his tongue explore the curling lobe of her ear.
She shivered in his arms, then said his name again, only this time it was a command, not a question.
A command to let her go. Turning, he saw why. The door was open and although the nurse who’d gone for coffee was apparently chatting to someone in the corridor, it would be only a matter of moments before she came in.
Reluctantly Sam released his captive and stepped back, then felt a wave of what could only have been embarrassment wash through his body.
Had he really been kissing Meg right here in the hospital?
Kissing her with fire and passion?
Kissing her in a way that could lead who knew where?
‘You should go,’ she said, sliding past him and sinking back down into the chair.
‘You won’t come?’
Stupid question! He’d known that even as he’d asked it—well before he saw Meg glance towards the sleeping Benjie then lift her eyebrows.
He shook his head at his own stupidity, touched her lightly on the arm and left the room.
Left Meg with more confusion in her head and heart than she would have believed possible.
The kiss had distracted her, but before that—even as she sought to comfort him—she’d felt a hint of some question unanswered. A nebulous niggle she couldn’t pin down…
Was it just about Sam?
About how all this baggage from his past might have affected him?
She didn’t think so, but he certainly had plenty right from the start—a fatherless boy who’d pretended not having a father hadn’t mattered. Was she the only one who’d known how much it had bothered him? Known how hard he’d tried at other things, determined to be the best at all he’d undertaken—controlling the parts of his life he could control, including his emotions.
Then Ben’s words and the gut-wrenching emotional tail-spin they sent him into.
Her mind returned to the kiss—the man’s kiss—and she shivered. It had started as a gentle expression of something that couldn’t be put into words, then deepened beyond measure, drawing from her a response so different to anything she’d offered or experienced she found herself trembling at the memory.
Forget the kiss—forget Sam!
But she couldn’t forget his pain.
Could the Bay heal him as it had healed her?
She’d come back to the Bay to hide away from all the things that had gone wrong in her life, and gradually the place had worked its magic. Eventually she’d found contentment—even a quiet happiness.
Until yesterday, when a tall dark stranger had twirled her panties on his finger…
A gurgle of delight from Benjie woke Meg, who looked around the pre-dawn ward unable to believe she had slept so soundly.
Obviously physical and emotional exhaustion had something going for them!
‘Hey, Benjie,’ she said softly, bending over the little boy, letting his grasping hands find her forefingers and cling to them. ‘How are you doing?’
‘I was coming in to ask him the same thing.’
Meg turned to find Jenny right behind her.
‘Ben OK?’ she asked, and Jenny nodded.
‘OK enough to demand I have a shower then come and check on our son. Bossy as always!’ She lifted her little boy out of the cot and hugged him. ‘Can I slip off his mask and take him through to see Ben?’
Meg looked at the pink cheeks of the little boy nuzzling into his mother’s shoulder, and nodded.
‘He seems fine,’ she said, to confirm the nod, then, as Jenny thanked her for sitting with him, she had to admit she’d done little more than sleep beside him.
‘But if he’d woken, he’d have seen you there,’ Jenny pointed out. ‘He’s used to having one of us beside him in the chair, or Mum, if there’s a crisis at the farm. So even if you were sleeping, he’d have been reassured. We could probably put a big doll in the chair.’
Meg put her arm around Jenny’s shoulders and gave her a hug.
‘You always know the right thing to say,’ she said gratefully, but Jenny shrugged off the praise, then turned to Meg.
‘I don’t know what to say about Sam’s return,’ she admitted. ‘Ben and I were talki
ng about it earlier. Are you all right with him being here? I know you split up that Christmas but now he’s back…’
‘I’m all right,’ Meg told her, though when she thought about Sam ‘all right’ was a long, long way off. All wrong was closer to the mark.
Jenny left, and Meg bent to tidy Benjie’s cot, knowing she should leave—go home and have a shower, change her clothes, get ready for another day at work.
But what had been her home was now Sam’s home…
As if conjured up by her thoughts, he was standing in the doorway, his clean, pressed, ready-for-work appearance somehow magnified by her rumpled, messy state.
‘I remembered you had no transport,’ he said quietly, as, anxious not to disturb the sleeping children, she walked towards the door. ‘Thought I’d come up early and give you a lift home.’
Home! There was that word again. For some reason—was it seeing Sam, or the remembered image of a little boy nuzzling at Jenny’s shoulder?—it no longer sounded welcoming.
She ran her hand through her hair, thinking how dishevelled she must look—not a happy thought but a better alternative than considering unwelcoming homes.
‘I can walk,’ she said to Sam, and didn’t need the lifting of his eyebrows to tell him it was a stupid statement.
But that simple facial movement made her cross. That and the fact there was still a worry lingering somewhere in the back of her mind.
And distracting remnants of the heat of that kiss lingering in her body…
‘It’s only two miles,’ she grouched, then she saw the concern in his eyes and regretted the impulse.
‘OK, that’s a stupid thing to say. Thanks!’ she managed, but still ungraciously, so she forced herself to add, ‘If I walked I’d end up late for work.’
She followed him out of the hospital, towards the car park, pausing as he stopped next to a dark blue car.
‘Are you all right?’
She looked at him, wondering what he was asking. Are you all right after all the revelations of last night?
Or are you all right that we seem to be kissing whenever we’re alone?
She went with the former and nodded, although now he’d asked she remembered there was something…
‘All right enough, I guess,’ she told him. ‘It was a lot to take in.’
‘I meant about the other thing.’
Meg stared at him, then shook her head.
‘By other thing, I assume you mean the kiss.’
He nodded abruptly, a slight frown on his face, as if hearing the word had been distasteful.
‘For Pete’s sake, Sam, it was just a kiss. It’s not as if it was something we hadn’t done a thousand times before. Why shouldn’t I be all right?’
He was still frowning, only his expression now was one of confusion. For a moment it seemed as if he would say something more, but instead he opened the car door and held it for her. She slipped under his arm—too close for comfort—memories of the kiss that had in no way been ‘just a kiss’ still vivid in her head. Still tingling along her nerves!
Smelling leather and a hint of a clean, sharp aftershave, she sank into the soft seat, seeing wood panelling as he opened his door and the interior light came back on. Even she, who couldn’t tell one car from another, knew this meant serious money had been spent.
Relieved to have something to take her mind off the grumpiness she was feeling, she sniffed the air and asked, ‘What kind of car is this?’
He turned towards her and she caught the delight in his smile.
‘Is this the woman who used to tell me a car was merely a way for getting from one place to another if it was too far to walk?’ he teased, and she wanted to tell him not to smile at her—not to tease.
‘I only told you that because you were always raving on about this car or that—showing me pictures of the red sports car you were going to buy one day. This car isn’t red and it certainly doesn’t look like a sports car.’
‘Ah, but looks can be deceiving,’ he murmured. Something mechanical hummed softly and suddenly Meg could see the morning sky above them, pale blue streaked with pink from the sunrise. ‘Convertible. Do you mind the wind in your hair?’
They were driving very slowly out of the car park so the wind was little more than a zephyr, though on this already warm morning exceedingly pleasant.
She looked at Sam, seeing not the man but the dream she’d left behind so long ago. She may have mocked his yearning for a sports car, but at the same time she’d pictured herself in just this situation—sitting beside him as he drove, the wind sweeping her hair back behind her.
But this wasn’t déjà vu—this was real. Sam was real, the car was real and, yes, the car was moving faster and, tangled though it was, her hair was streaming back behind her now.
‘I used to daydream about this,’ she said. ‘Sitting in the car beside you—the wind blowing through my hair.’
He turned towards her and smiled. ‘Well, you were the only girl I ever imagined beside me in the red convertible, although I did wonder if the colour would clash with your hair.’
‘Is that why you bought a blue car?’ Meg teased, feeling more at ease with Sam than she had since his surprise return.
‘Maybe it was,’ he told her, but he wasn’t smiling now. He was looking at the road ahead and frowning—just slightly, but enough for Meg to know the moment had passed.
He couldn’t possibly have bought a blue car because it would go better with the hair of someone he hadn’t seen for thirteen years, Sam told himself. No, not even subconsciously.
But the thought had rattled him—the way just about everything to do with Meg was rattling him.
What had happened to the cool, mature, always-in-control Sam that had been his persona for the last however many years? Where had that Sam gone, and how could he get him back?
He sighed then realised Meg was talking to him.
‘How’s your mother?’
It was the only thing Meg could think to ask to snap her out of the little bubble of delight that riding with Sam in the convertible was spreading around her.
‘She died a month ago.’
Well, that worked! The crisp, matter-of-fact reply was like a slap across her face, and she turned towards him, her lips opening to ask how or why, but his face was set—his profile so stern and hard it could have been carved from marble and hung about with ‘don’t go there’ signs.
In spite of a momentary softening only minutes earlier, he was still adept at hiding his emotions.
But how could she not pursue it?
‘I’m sorry. I liked Gina. She was always kind to me.’
‘She was kind to everyone.’
A second slap, but Meg realised he hadn’t meant either of them to hurt her, his harshness nothing more than reaction to his own pain. Typical Sam, shutting himself off from anything emotional—Mr Tough Guy!
Without thinking, she reached across and rested her hand on his thigh—lightly, but not so lightly she didn’t feel him flinch.
Hurt again, she removed it as swiftly as she could, and hid a sigh of relief as he pulled up outside the cottage. She fumbled against the unfamiliar door for the catch, desperate to get away from him before she made any more mistakes.
He got out, coming around the car to hold her door for her, silently polite.
What to say? Meg wondered.
Nothing! That’s what. No words could cure the pain of a loved one’s death. She, of all people, knew that, and though he’d never in a million years admit it, his mother’s death must have devastated him. So she nodded her thanks to him for the little courtesy, then found voice to thank him for the lift, and without looking back to see the car move on to the house next door, she made her way to the cottage, calling to her cat as she went, needing something to hold—something to love.
Unreservedly.
The cat, of course, wasn’t home.
‘You’re in the wrong house,’ Sam said to the cat who sat, tail curled around h
is legs, on the kitchen window-sill. The cat blinked its incredible blue eyes—just once—then continued to study Sam, obviously considering him the intruder.
But the cat gave him the excuse he needed. Not that he was going to let Meg slip beneath his emotional armour again, but he’d been plain rude to her earlier.
He crossed the room and lifted the animal into his arms, then carried him down the back steps and across to the cottage.
When Meg opened the side door to his knock, she had already taken off her crumpled clothes and was hastily tying a vivid red, brightly flowered, satiny-looking robe around her body.
It was the kind of fabric that begged a man to run his hands across it—feeling the silky softness, feeling the body beneath.
He knew he must be frowning as this Meg and his Meg had collided in his mind with devastating effect, but remembered just in time why he’d come, and offered her the cat.
‘I thought you might be looking for him.’
Duh!
‘Thanks,’ she said, taking the animal into her arms and snuggling her chin against the furry, dark-chocolate-coloured head.
The cat was an excuse, Sam reminded himself, but he was mesmerised by the lithe, red-clad woman in front of him—by the shiny wrappings, by the body they did little to conceal.
‘I…er…’
‘Was there something else?’
Did she not know how sexy she looked?
Of course she must!
Why else would she own such a garment, except to put it on for a man?
For the question-mark man?
He peered beyond her, wondering…
‘You?’ she said helpfully, and he concentrated on the cat to distance himself from other thoughts.
‘I’m sorry I spoke as I did in the car. Mum liked you, too. A lot.’
He brushed his hand across his head, kneading at his scalp through the thick, cropped hair.
Why were emotions so difficult?
‘It’s just still very—recent, Meg. Mum’s death.’
Then, afraid if he stayed—if he said one more word—too much might come tumbling out, he turned and walked away, resolutely not looking back, not wanting to see the woman in the red robe, the woman with a cat in her arms.
Bride at Bay Hospital Page 5
