by Amy Andrews
Cade would have had to be deaf not to hear the brittle emphasis on ‘fabulous’ and even though he had rebuked Callie earlier for her trivial complaints, he suddenly felt very sorry for her. Maybe it was worse to have someone who pretended they cared than someone who didn’t give a damn at all.
Beneath the table he slid his hand onto Callie’s thigh and gave it a squeeze. As a show of support, of solidarity.
It was warm and soft beneath his hand and he hadn’t counted on how very much he didn’t want to withdraw it.
He had to force himself—one finger at a time.
Callie felt heat jolt from his palm and streak all the way up her inner thigh to settle between her legs. And it didn’t matter that his hand was gone almost as soon as it had landed, that place between her legs was humming away like an electric current.
She chose to concentrate on that rather than her mother’s persistent belief that she was an obstetrician.
‘I don’t deliver a lot of babies, Mum. That’s not really my job. That’s why there are midwives and obstetricians.’
‘So you don’t deliver babies at all?’ She looked at her husband with a confused frown before looking back at her daughter. ‘But I thought you were a baby doctor?’
Callie took a moment to bite back a sharp retort. Every time they got together she had to explain what she did.
‘I deliver a few. But my main job is to work with sick newborns, usually ones that are admitted to NICU. I work with a lot of premmie babies usually. I also deal with prenatal issues, conditions that can affect babies in utero, before they’re born. So does Cade.’
She turned to Cade and smiled at him with what she hoped were her most desperate eyes. Please help me. ‘In fact, Cade operates on babies while they’re still inside the uterus.’
Margaret gasped. ‘You can do that?’
Cade got the message in those amazing blue-green eyes loud and clear. He chuckled. ‘Yes. We can now. Sometimes. In the right circumstances.’
Callie was relieved, sort of, when they talked about what Cade did all through the first course. When the waiter cleared the plates Callie was left in no doubt her mother was in total awe of Cade’s medical skills. And she tried not to let that hurt because she knew, had always known, that her mother was old school. She didn’t think that medicine was something a woman should be doing. Hell, she had been horrified when the first female GP had set up practice in Broken Hill.
The day Callie had told her she was leaving to study medicine, her mother had gone straight to church and said a prayer for her. In fact, Callie was pretty sure she was still on the regular prayer list at the local church.
Callie couldn’t bear it any longer. ‘How’s work, Dad?’ she asked, changing the subject.
They talked about the mine for a while as the coffees were served, which segued into her mother catching Callie up on all the home-town gossip she couldn’t care less about. People Callie had known what seemed like a hundred years ago, who she’d gone to school with or her brothers had played footy with. Who was married to whom and how many kids they had. Who was getting married. And who weren’t married but living in sin. And having children.
Callie, who had declined coffee in preference for a fourth glass of wine, was just about at screaming point. If nothing else, it was rude to talk about people Cade knew nothing about—not that he appeared bothered. And he was much too polite to interrupt. Callie, however, was not, and she was getting ready to tell her mother enough already when the most startling piece of gossip was revealed.
‘Joe is having a baby.’
Callie really wished her mother had chosen a time when she wasn’t in mid-swallow to drop that little piece of information. She practically inhaled the wine she’d been drinking and plonked the glass on the table as she coughed and spluttered.
Cade frowned at Callie’s reaction as he automatically rubbed her between her shoulder blades. Joe? Who the hell was Joe?
Callie caught her breath and looked at her mother, amazed that she was even mentioning his name in front of someone who might ask about him and she might have to relive the whole embarrassing chapter again. But maybe she’d assumed that Cade already knew about Joe?
‘He’s not married, of course. Who is these days?’ she tutted. ‘But he moved to Noosa a couple of years ago and now he’s with this girl…What’s her name?’ she asked, turning to Duncan.
‘Raylene.’
‘Ah, yes, that’s it. Raylene.’
Callie’s head was spinning so much she forgot that Cade was even there. ‘Joe left Broken Hill?’
Her ex-husband was a born and bred Broken Hill local. For three generations his family had run a massive cattle property just out of town and he had been a huge part of that, eagerly awaiting the day it would all be his.
And now he lived just a two-hour drive north?
Margaret shrugged. ‘Well, she’s a city girl so…what was he to do?’
Callie blinked at her mother’s casual attitude. So it was okay for wonderful ex-son-in-law Joe to leave but not her? When Callie had left it had been a betrayal and she had been giving up on her dead-as-a-doornail marriage and her family and her roots, but it was perfectly fine for Joe to leave?
Anger, thick and hot, like mercury, bubbled through her veins but was smothered by even heavier emotions. Joe, her Joe, had left the only life he had ever known to settle far away with another woman? And they were having a baby together?
Joe, who hadn’t touched her in the whole year they had been married. Joe, who hadn’t wanted her. Joe, who had blamed her for not being sexy enough, alluring enough, beautiful enough to arouse him.
No matter what she’d done.
No matter how hard she’d tried. No matter what sexy lingerie she’d bought or what aphrodisiac she’d cooked or what humiliating movies she’d hired.
The shocking reality that their issues had been her fault after all clawed like talons at her gut. She’d driven herself crazy over the years thinking just that, and had worked hard to convince herself that it had been him and his intimacy issues that had caused their sexless marriage—not her.
Hell, she’d even at one stage during their brief marriage entertained the notion that her husband might be gay. Which was the most absurd, bizarre thing to have thought, honed in the pit of absolute despair from her confusion and naivety. He was the blokiest bloke she knew, for crying out loud. It was why she’d fallen for him—he’d been so incredibly manly.
Footy, cricket, fishing. Swilling beers with the boys at the pub on Friday night.
Riding, shooting, fencing.
He could rope a calf and castrate a cow in his sleep. All the girls at school had wanted him. All the guys had wanted to be him.
She was sure Joe was as straight as they came. Which had only made it all the more confusing.
She’d spent the last decade of her life getting out from under his taunts about her inadequacy as a woman. Sleeping with man after man. Seizing control of her sex life, making men want her, making them beg and need.
Proving Joe wrong.
But, faced with Raylene and the baby, she couldn’t do it any more. It was time to face facts. It had been her. Joe hadn’t found her sexually attractive.
Cade squeezed her thigh as Callie’s silence stretched. ‘Are you okay?’ he murmured.
No. Callie was decidedly not okay. She was reeling. She wanted to get out of there. She wanted to walk. She wanted to run. She wanted to find a man.
She needed to be with a man really freaking badly.
A man who could prove with his actions, with his body, that it wasn’t her. That he was into her. She needed a little worship. Some goddamn sexual adoration.
And she needed it badly.
‘Callie?’
She looked up into Cade’s concerned face. Cade. She needed Cade. The only man who had turned her down since Joe. If she could get Cade, she’d be able to prove it hadn’t been her.
That she was desirable.
‘Cal
lie?’ This time it was her mother, her voice slightly shrill. ‘Are you okay?’ she demanded.
Callie pulled herself together with a monumental effort. The last thing she needed was for her mother to read too much into her reaction. ‘I’m fine.’
‘I told you this would happen,’ Margaret said. ‘He was always going to find someone else. Someone who would stick by him.’
It took all of Callie’s willpower to nod and say, ‘I know. And I’m really pleased for him. That he found someone. That he’s happy.’
Because, God knew, they’d been miserable.
‘So, Duncan, tell me about your trip,’ Cade said after a few more awkward moments had passed. ‘Callie tells me you’re heading up to the cape.’
Callie could have kissed him as the topic shifted. In fact, she planned on doing just that. And a lot more. She just had to get him alone. Get away from her parents and this train wreck of an evening and seduce his brains out.
Thankfully, being from the country worked in her favour for once and her mother was calling it a night twenty minutes later. Callie hugged them and wished them a safe trip, but she knew in her heart of hearts she wasn’t sorry to see them go. She always felt like a failed nineteen-year-old in her mother’s eyes, disgracing the good Richards name with a divorce after only one year of marriage.
Regardless of what she’d made of her life since then.
And she really didn’t need that. Especially not tonight, after the news of Joe, when she already felt completely inadequate as a woman.
Her parents left in a cab five minutes later and Cade turned to her. ‘Are you okay?’ he asked.
He wasn’t sure quite what had gone on or who Joe was but he was pretty sure Callie had been involved with him at one stage and clearly still wasn’t over him.
‘Sure,’ Callie lied.
The lights in the alcove outside the restaurant shone on his dark brown hair and she itched To run her fingers through it. To strip off his shirt and run her hands all over a chest that she’d already seen on full display. To unzip his fly and know the essence of him. To feel him hard and moving inside her. To get lost in the ecstasy. To watch him as he got lost, too.
And she didn’t care that they had to work together. Tonight she needed this.
She needed him.
Cade frowned down at her, unconvinced. ‘Come on, let’s get you home.’
Callie shook her head. She didn’t want to go home. She wanted to stay right here in this moment and let the churn of emotions she was feeling dictate what happened next.
She didn’t want him returning her to their reality. Not before she’d altered his reality forever.
She looked up at him in the half light. ‘I feel too restless to go home. You wanna go for a walk on the beach?’
CHAPTER FOUR
CADE WALKED A PACE or two behind Callie as she trod barefoot across the sand, making a direct line for the water’s edge. They’d taken their shoes off as soon as their feet had hit the deserted beach and left them where they fell.
When she reached the line where waves met shore, she crouched and rolled up her jeans to her knees. She stood, her gaze fixed on the horizon as water rushed around her ankles, her hair flying behind her in the stiff ocean breeze.
Cade couldn’t help but wonder what kind of power this Joe held to turn Callie from nervous but resigned earlier in the evening to tense and all but mute now.
Cade drew even with her and also rolled up the cuffs of his jeans. He stood silently bedside her for a while, also admiring the view to the horizon. Clouds scudded across the heavens, obliterating any moonlight, but stars peeked through in patches. He found it hard to believe that on the other side of this vast ocean was everything he’d ever known and loved and a whole bunch of other things he didn’t want to think about.
Cade sucked in a deep, salty breath. ‘You wanna talk about what happened just now?’ he asked.
Callie shook her head, her hair whipping across her face as she looked up at him. ‘Oh, God, no.’ She didn’t want to talk about it. She didn’t want to think about it. She didn’t want to remember it had ever happened.
In fact, she wanted to forget. And she knew the perfect way to do so.
‘You don’t want to talk about this Joe person?’
Callie snorted, tucking strands of her flyaway hair behind her ear. ‘I paid five thousand dollars for this date. You think I want to talk about some ancient history from Broken Hill?’
Cade wasn’t fooled by the casual dismissal. The wind whipped her brittle tone straight into his ear and he recognised her effort at self-defence all too well.
‘Okay, sure…’ He stuffed his hands into his pockets. ‘It’s your date.’
‘Good,’ she said, hoping he’d be as compliant later. ‘Let’s walk.’
Callie was pretty sure they were alone on the beach and given it was nine on a Sunday night were likely to stay that way, but she didn’t want to seduce Cade in full view of the restaurant and a popular park complete with public boardwalk.
They walked in silence, for which she was grateful. The lights from restaurant and the boardwalk faded as they left them behind, the beach growing darker as trees loomed to the right, affording the beach more privacy. Better night vision and occasional glimpses of the moon were enough to guide their way.
After about ten minutes of nothing but the sound of the breeze and waves Cade said, ‘So how’d you get into medicine if it wasn’t something your folks encouraged you to do?’
Callie startled at the sudden sound. Her brain had been considering more pressing matters, like how invasive sand could be in certain areas. His voice slithering between them had been unexpected.
It certainly made her think she could probably cope with a little sand in places that had never seen it before.
‘Long, boring story,’ she said dismissively. And one that took her back to a place and time she was desperately trying to escape.
‘Are we in a hurry?’ he asked.
Callie stopped walking. He’d heard more than enough about her tonight. Even if he didn’t understand any of it. She turned to face the ocean. ‘You wanna go for a swim?’
Cade looked around. She was staring out at the horizon again. Like she might just like to swim and keep swimming far away from whatever was eating at her. But he knew, better than anyone, that some things just couldn’t be escaped.
Wasn’t that what Alex had said to him as he’d left the US? The only way to get past your problems is to confront them.
‘But there are no flags.’ He feigned shock as he walked towards her.
Callie shot him a sarcastic smile. Tonight she didn’t care about flags or sharks or whatever the hell else might be in the water. Tonight her past had come back to haunt her and, frankly, was making her a little crazy.
Driving her, nagging her, needling her.
You’re not sexy enough.
You’re not good enough.
You’re not woman enough.
It ran like a chant through her head to the pounding of the waves. Each crash reinforcing it like a mantra in her head.
Goading her into recklessness, into irrationality, into insanity.
And one look at Cade’s strong profile shadowed by the night told her he was her craziness of choice.
‘Well, I guess,’ she said, reaching for the hem of her top and hauling it over her head, the wind instantly sweeping cool fingers over her torso, ‘tonight is my night for living dangerously.’
Cade blinked as Callie stood before him in her jeans and bra. A better man, a gentleman, might not have looked but it had been a long time since he’d been up close and personal with a half-naked woman and his gaze dropped without a moment’s hesitation, taking in every gorgeous millimetre. From the tips of lovely shoulders to the creamy rise of breasts to the depths of wicked cleavage.
His throat felt as dry as the powdery white sand up closer to the tree line and he swallowed. ‘Er…Callie, I don’t think you should do that.’
Well…failure wasn’t an option tonight.
‘Oh, I think I should,’ she said, unzipping her fly and wriggling out of her jeans, careful not to take her knickers with them. ‘I think tonight is the perfect night.’
Then she kicked out of her jeans and was standing before him in nothing but her underwear. And his gaze dropped again, taking in the curve of her waist and the length of her legs.
‘Are you coming?’ she asked.
Cade dragged his gaze back up her body with difficulty. She was standing there with her hands on her hips and he knew he should say no. That getting in the water with a half-naked, wet, slippery Callie was playing a very dangerous game. He should tell her how statistically you were more likely to be the victim of a shark attack at night—that ought to do it.
But she was standing there in her underwear, looking at him expectantly, and he could hardly let her go in by herself, could he? And not just because of potential predators, but in case she did do something completely foolhardy, like make a break for the horizon.
After two hours with her mother and four glasses of wine someone was going to need to chaperon her.
He sighed then reached for the hem of his shirt and stripped it off. ‘You do know it’s going to be freezing, right?’ he said as he threw his shirt on top of her clothes then picked the pile up and tossed them higher up the beach away from the reach of the waves. The tide was going out but Cade wasn’t risking it.
Callie nodded absently, her skin already breaking out in goose-bumps. But what she had planned for them would warm them up pretty quickly. Even the striptease he was performing as he shucked off his jeans was causing a thermal reaction deep inside her belly.
Cade turned back from throwing his jeans on the pile to find her inspecting the fit of his clingy boxers. Fire streaked to his groin and something pulled tight in his gut.
‘Ladies first,’ he said, sweeping his hand towards the water to indicate she should precede him and breathing a sigh of relief when she did.
