‘And you gave up your dream? Because you felt guilty?’
The question shocked Jo so much that at first it didn’t make sense, then she realised the track his thoughts had taken.
‘But I didn’t give up my dream—not in a, well, now-I-can’t-be-a-pro-surfer kind of way. All I wanted to do was be with her—there was no time for surfing,’ she told him. ‘Then, because she was so badly injured, because she spent so long in hospitals and rehab centres, and I spent so much time with her, studying medicine seemed a natural thing to do.’
She stared out to sea, replaying her answer in her head then adding, ‘I think,’ in such a worried, pathetic voice that Cam couldn’t help himself.
He reached out and put his arm around her shoulders, shifting so when he drew her closer her head could rest against his chest.
‘Sometimes stuff we have shoved into the deep recesses of our minds needs dredging out,’ he said quietly, and felt her head nod against his body. Then his other arm snaked around her, and he held her close, dropping a kiss onto the wet red snarls of hair on the top of her head.
‘Salty,’ he mused then he sniffed, ‘and you smell like the sea. It’s a good smell, healthy, you should get your hair ocean wet again before too long.’
He was talking to calm her, to reassure her. There was nothing beyond comfort in the hug he was giving her, and if his body didn’t agree with that, then too bad.
The warmth of his body crept into Jo’s cold one, right into the frozen places that even hot summer weather had failed to warm since Jilly’s death. The inner warmth whispered danger, but it whispered—no, shouted—other things as well. Things like desire …
Far harder to handle, desire, than lust. Lust could be put down as a base animal instinct but desire—well, surely that was about softer feelings.
She pushed away from the warmth, and her thoughts.
‘Thanks for the hug,’ she said, in as matter-of-fact voice as she could summon up. ‘I needed it. I didn’t realise just how much emotion would come dredging up—to use your words—on the back of one wave. But that’s twice I’ve dredged stuff up to you—now it’s your turn.’
He looked startled, but she wasn’t relenting.
‘Is it just your memories from the army or more than that you’re escaping?’
‘Escaping?’ he echoed, and she had to laugh.
‘Of course you’re escaping—surfing your way along the coast. Not that it isn’t a good way to escape, but can you do it for ever?’
Cam stared at her.
Okay, he was attracted to her, and there was an element of danger in that attraction, but this—this questioning, that was different, disturbing.
‘Probably not,’ he admitted, and she laughed again.
‘That’s not nearly enough,’ she insisted, touching him on the arm, something she had done before—something he enjoyed her doing. ‘I can understand there are probably things you can’t talk about—things people who haven’t experienced being a doctor in a war zone could never imagine—but you must have known you’d come out of the army one day and had maybe not a dream but an idea of what you wanted to do. Just as Jilly’s death changed my career path, was it just the army experience that changed yours?’
It isn’t her business, one part of him insisted.
She’s impertinent for asking, it added.
But deep inside a longing to share just a little of his turmoil was growing stronger and stronger, and as he looked into her eyes and saw the depth of compassion and understanding there, he knew that this was a woman he could tell.
‘I came home remote, detached, even morose—or so my ex-fiancée told me. The psychologist I saw—they run us all past one of them from time to time—dismissed PTSD but pointed out I was pretty close to suffering it, with flashbacks and nightmares. He suggested drugs but surfing is my drug of choice, hence the coastal odyssey.’
He blurted out the words then heard their echo in his head and realised how ridiculous they sounded.
He shouldn’t have mentioned the morose part!
How pathetic.
Heaven help him.
‘I’d have been way beyond morose.’
How had she picked up on the one thing he regretted? he thought, then tuned back in to what Jo was saying.
‘Though I can’t imagine anyone the description fits less than you. As for remote and detached—well, sometimes those are places we all need to be at times.’ She squeezed his arm with her slender fingers, sending an electric arc of desire fizzing through his body.
Talk about inappropriate.
He covered her hand with his, hoping, really, to stop the reaction, but touching her while she was touching him seemed to make it worse—far worse.
‘And what about this ex-fiancée? Did she dump you because you were remote?’
The zinging in his body was so extreme it took him a moment to compute Jo’s words and when he did, and heard the sympathy behind the question, he had to smile.
‘Not really,’ he told Jo. ‘It was more a mutual thing. We’d grown apart even before I went away. Our lives diverged.’
He was about to add that it wasn’t a broken heart he was escaping but the gentle tightening of her hand on his arm was so pleasurable he decided to accept a little extra sympathy.
Pathetic, that’s what he was …
‘Perhaps we should go home,’ he finally managed, then immediately regretted it when her hand slid from beneath his and she started the car.
Squinting against the setting sun, Jo turned the car for home, her heart thudding in her chest as she considered how easy it would be to fall if not in love with this man then certainly into bed with him.
No, surely the surge of sympathy she’d felt when he’d mentioned his ex-fiancée was more than lust?
Attraction, would that do?
She should be asking more about the ex-fiancée—or maybe not. Maybe he’d said all he intended saying …
The silence stretched while her mind tossed questions back and forth—how bad had it been in the army? Was the engagement over or did the ex still love the morose man? Cam morose? Not that she, Jo, had seen.
‘Have you been on your own since your father left? No wild affairs, no men passing through your life, no blighted romance?’
Jo found the questions so unexpected—and hadn’t it been her turn to be probing?—that she had to stop the car again.
‘And you’re asking because?’ she asked, while just a little twinge of hope twittered in her heart.
He raised his eyebrows as if her demand had surprised him. Then he smiled and she wished she’d just kept driving.
‘I just wondered,’ he said, oh, so gently, ‘whether you might have been punishing yourself for your sister’s accident for way too long—not surfing, which you obviously love—and maybe standing back from any kind of close relationship because she can’t have one.’
‘I suppose I asked for that,’ she admitted ruefully, ‘telling the story of my life to a psychologist.’
She shifted so she was leaning back against the door, almost out of touching distance—not wanting to touch, although it was so tempting.
Concentrate on the conversation, she told herself. Maybe get him talking.
She didn’t want to consider why that seemed important right now, so she didn’t.
‘Do you do it to yourself?’ she asked instead. ‘Discuss the pros and cons of your surfing escape inside your head? Is it easier to understand grief and loss and horror if you can rationalise it through stuff you’ve learned from books?’
He smiled again and she knew she shouldn’t have stopped the car—should have driven straight home and escaped into the house. The problem was, the more she was with this man, the more she wanted to know of him—and be with him.
But for all he made noises about maybe staying longer in Crystal Cove, she knew he’d eventually move on.
‘I’m not sure it works, doing it to yourself—well, it hasn’t so far for me, although e
very day things look a little brighter and going on gets a little easier,’ he said. And this time it was he who touched—reaching out to rest his hand on her arm as she had rested hers on his.
The brush of his fingers on her skin zapped her nerve endings to life and she found herself shivering—not with cold but with a weird mix of excitement and delight.
She definitely shouldn’t have stopped the car.
And, no, she wasn’t going to cover his hand with hers, as he’d done earlier. Definitely not, although her hand was moving in that direction.
The jangling tones of her mobile stopped the strangeness going on in the car right then and there. She answered it, and listened, her heart sinking in her chest.
‘Do you want us to come over?’ she asked.
‘It’s Jackie’s choice,’ Lauren told her.
Jo closed the phone, not even bothering with a goodbye, then bumped her forehead gently on the steering-wheel as frustration threatened to overwhelm her.
‘Jackie going back to Richard?’ Cam asked, his voice deep with concern and understanding.
‘Apparently he came to see her when the boys were out with us. He took her for a drive so they could talk. He’s just collected all three of them.’
‘Surely she’ll be safe for a while,’ Cam said, and Jo shrugged.
‘It’s so hard to predict. Yes, I’d say in most cases where a woman goes back, the man does try to control his temper for a while, and in Jackie’s case the abuse was more emotional than physical, but Richard’s such an unknown quantity, and though Jackie is an intelligent woman, she’s lived under his domination for so long now, I wonder if she’ll ever be able to break free.’
‘Are you his doctor?’
Jo looked at Cam, wondering where this was going.
‘Richard’s? No way. He’s one of those men who’d drive three hours down the road rather than trust a woman doctor. He used to see Dad but, then, young men like him rarely see a doctor anyway. He was good at all sports so any injuries he had were mostly sport related. He might see Tom at the hospital now, if he has a strain or sprain.’
She hesitated, wondering why Cam had asked, trying to fathom his thinking.
‘Why?’ she finally asked.
‘I was thinking if he did use the clinic, you could have switched him to me. I couldn’t have brought up the subject of abuse, not in any way, but he might be harbouring a grudge against you.’
Jo smiled.
‘That’s a lovely offer, but I’m a big girl. I can handle myself.’
He shook his head.
‘Not so big,’ he said, ‘and you of all people should know that no one could handle an angry man with a cricket bat.’
The thought of Jackie returning to that situation filled Jo with fear, although the bat, as far as she knew, had been no more than a threat.
‘Best we get home,’ she said, sliding the vehicle back into gear.
Richard Trent came at ten. Cam couldn’t say for certain he’d known the man would come, but his gut feeling—and his knowledge of men from his time in the army—had made him ultra-cautious, so he was sitting not on his deck but in the darkened living room of the flat, music playing softly as he explored the world of programmes for abusive men on his laptop. The backlight of the screen was sufficient for him to read the information offered by the internet.
The vehicle pulled up, a dual-cab, four-wheel-drive ute, a muscle car. At first Cam thought it might be Mike, maybe returning for a private visit to Jo, but as the man came into range of the sensor lights, Cam realised he didn’t know him.
Neither did he know Richard Trent, and Jo hadn’t answered about having men—or even a man—in her life, so it could be perfectly innocent, but Cam was already out the door, mooching towards his van, the bundle of clean beach towels he’d prepared earlier tucked under his arm.
‘Hi!’ he said, all innocence. ‘Visiting Jo, are you? I’m Fraser Cameron, her new tenant in the flat. Working for her over the holidays.’
The stranger, his face pink but his lips thinned to a white line of anger, stopped about a yard in front of Cam, glaring at him.
‘So you’re the bastard, are you? Call you Cam, don’t they? Cam this, Cam that, my boys haven’t stopped, but let me tell you this, Fraser Cameron, my name is Richard Trent and you stay away from my kids. If they want to learn to surf, I’ll teach them, understand?’
Cam held out his free hand in a ‘hey, man’ gesture, then actually used the words.
‘Hey, man, no worries. It was just that Jo found the old boards in her storeroom and, knowing the boys, she thought they might like to try them.’
‘Well, they don’t and they won’t and you can tell that to Dr Harris as well. She, of all people, should know how dangerous it is to surf, seeing what it did to her sister.’
It flicked through Cam’s mind that Jo had been right—it had taken all of two days for someone to tell him about her sister.
‘And tell her to stay away from my wife while you’re at it. My family is none of her business, understand?’
Cam nodded, but his mind was whirring. Richard Trent was wound so tightly he was going to unravel totally before too long. Cam had seen it in young soldiers, particularly among those handling new responsibilities, and he knew it was impossible to predict just how the unravelling would happen. It could be an explosive burst, or a crumble into desperation that could often precipitate worse results than the explosion.
Could he help Richard Trent unwind in some way? Offer something to help the man relax? The fact that Richard hadn’t walked away when he’d finished his warning suggested he might be looking for help, if only subconsciously.
‘Have you surfed yourself?’ Cam asked.
‘Everyone in the Cove surfs,’ the man growled, edging towards his ute. ‘I know the boys’ll want to do it some time, but they’re better off concentrating on their cricket right now.’
‘It’s years since I played cricket,’ Cam told him, hoping to keep a conversation going long enough for Richard to calm down before he got back behind the wheel of his vehicle. ‘Though I did quite well at it when I was at school. Is there a local club? I’m probably not staying on at the Cove—two months’ trial run over the holidays—but if I stayed I’d be interested.’
In a game that would keep me out of the surf all summer? Cam’s head protested, but he could feel a little of the tension easing out of Richard.
‘We’re always looking for new members and we’ve an indoor cricket comp as well.’
He turned to Cam now, leaning against his ute, ready to talk a little more, Cam suspected, but rubbing at his left shoulder at the same time.
‘You a leftie?’ Cam asked. ‘A bowler?’
Richard frowned but his voice as he asked, ‘How’d you guess?’ was less tight.
‘Looks like you’ve got a bit of tendonitis. We’ve got an ultrasound machine down at the clinic that sometimes helps, and if you wanted to come in some time, I could use it on that shoulder and maybe do a bit of joint manipulation.’
Cam held his breath. He could feel Richard’s suspicion coming in waves off his body, yet his shoulder must be very sore for it to be distracting him in this situation.
Was the injury exacerbating the home situation?
Was he in so much pain he was taking it out on Jackie?’
Wishing he had more practical experience at dealing with domestic violence situations, Cam remained silent, then was delighted when Richard said, a little grudgingly, ‘Could I get an appointment tomorrow?’
‘Of course—in fact, if it suits you to come in early, we could make it eight-thirty. I don’t officially start until nine, so I could spend some time with you.’
Richard nodded as if agreeing, but through sheer bad luck Jo emerged from the house, a bag of rubbish in her hand, apparently heading for the bin but probably carrying it as an excuse as he, Cam, had carried the towels.
‘You!’ Richard yelled at her, swinging towards Jo, his hands forming fists,
although they hung on arms held rigidly to his sides.
‘Keep away from my wife and my kids!’
He flung himself into his car.
‘I almost wish he’d slammed the car door,’ Cam said as the ute backed out into the street and Richard drove away. ‘If he could let a little of his tension out in normal ways like slamming a door, I wouldn’t be so concerned, but his control is so strong it’s killing him.’
‘Better him than Jackie and the kids,’ Jo murmured, then, ashamed she’d even thought that way, let alone said it, she retracted it. ‘No, please let’s not have anyone dying.’
She looked at Cam, wondering why he was clutching beach towels against his chest.
‘Did you bump into him by accident?’
‘Not entirely,’ Cam told her with a slow smile. ‘Hence the beach towels—I wanted an excuse to come out to the van and now I’m here I’d better put them in. They won’t work a second time.’
‘He won’t come back, surely,’ Jo said, but she was still puzzled by whatever had been going on in the carport. ‘Did you expect him to come?’
‘I thought it was a fifty-fifty chance. Helping his wife get away was one thing, but taking his boys to the surf—that was really undermining his control of his family.’
Jo found herself sighing, something she seemed to be doing far too often these days.
‘Did he mention it?’
Cam had slid open the campervan door and was putting the towels in a small cupboard under the back seat.
‘Told me if they wanted to surf he’d teach them, and suggested I pass the message on to you.’
‘But he was here a while, I heard the voices,’ Jo said. ‘Longer than delivering a message would have taken. That’s why I came out. I thought it might be someone who was lost and you were having trouble with directions.’
‘I tried to talk to him,’ Cam admitted. ‘Actually, he’s got a bad shoulder and I’d just suggested he come in first thing in the morning to let me look at it.’
‘And I came bumbling out and spoiled it all.’
Cam closed the door of the van and turned towards her.
‘I doubt that. I don’t know if I was getting through—he hadn’t agreed to see me as a doctor. And for a while there, I was panicking, thinking I might have to join his cricket club and it would take up my surfing time.’
New Doc in Town / Orphan Under the Christmas Tree Page 11
