by Anne Oliver
His smile was. smug? ‘Too late to start now but I can do tuna cakes with a side salad.’
‘And he cooks too,’ she murmured, and kissed him lightly on the lips. ‘I’ll make the salad.’
‘No.’ He slid her off the counter and deposited her on the floor. His smile disappeared. ‘You’ll call Jared. He phoned while you were gone.’
Oh. ‘Right.’ She heard the message in Blake’s tone. She should have made that call earlier. ‘I take it you didn’t tell him about the business?’
‘That’s your task.’ He walked to the fridge and began pulling out ingredients. ‘He asked you to call him via webcam. He wants to see how you are for himself.’
With the satisfied glow of love-making in her eyes? Not flipping likely. ‘Oh, bother—the computer’s down, right?’ And her phone was too old for image-to-image capabilities.
‘I guess it is.’ He glanced at her as he set a bowl and chopping board on the counter where she’d been sitting moments ago. She felt herself colour. She’d never look at that counter in the same way again.
Taking her phone outside, she settled herself on a lounger by the pool in the fading afternoon’s warmth and called Jared. She started with an apology, briefly summarised what had been happening with the boat, then talked to little Isaac a moment, which gave her time to psych herself up for the next round of information.
‘Blake and I have gone into business together.’ As quick and easy as that, she thought.
‘I see.’
Clearly he didn’t.
She lay back and watched the palm fronds move in the breeze and told herself not to overreact. ‘He didn’t tell you because I asked him not to. I wanted to do it myself. Just listen first, will you?’
She hurried on with a quick overview, then outlined the details of her new partnership with Blake, his living-room makeover clause, the new clients she’d got and how fortunate she was to be getting her own business ra, ra, ra.
‘So, it makes sense to stay at Blake’s for now,’ she finished.
Silence.
She tracked the calming sight of flight of a flock of water birds as they skimmed the water.
Calm, calm, calm.
‘Is that wise, Liss?’
Calm vanished and irritation prickled between her shoulder blades but she kept her voice steady. ‘What are you implying?’ She flicked at an insect on her dress with a fingernail, then tapped on the lounger’s metal arm. ‘You know Blake—it’s not as if he’s a stranger.’
‘I know you had a little crush on him as a teenager but he’s been in the navy for fourteen years apart from that brief trip home when his mother died. He’s a sailor, for God’s sake.’
‘A clearance diver, to be precise.’ Jared knew about her crush? Her calm slipped another notch. ‘The naval equivalent to the Special Air Services.’
‘So he informed me,’ he replied coolly. ‘I am aware of what they do, Lissa.’
‘At least you know he’s not just any guy I picked up at a party.’ Like Todd.
‘Are you sleeping with him?’
She jerked upright. Forget calm, forget irritated, now she was angry. ‘Is that any of your business?’
‘My God, you are. It’s been what. days?’
‘Careful, Jared. Glass houses.’ She fought for composure; she didn’t want to argue long-distance.
There was a long pause. ‘He’s not going to hang around for long, honey. He’s buying himself a boat. Are you prepared for that?’
She knew. And she’d never be prepared. The heartache would come and the knowledge stabbed at her. She wished she’d thought to bring a drink with her to wash away the dry taste in her mouth. ‘I know all that. I’m not a kid.’
‘A man like Blake is not the settling-in-one-place kind of guy. He—’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sakes, didn’t you ever have a fling in your life? One wild, crazy no-strings affair with no unrealistic expectations?’ Then she frowned, remembering he’d been too busy being a parent to her, and said quietly, ‘No, I guess you didn’t.’
‘Is that what this is?’
She blinked back a sudden moisture, already storing memories of Blake in her heart. ‘What else would it be?’ What else could it be? She gave a light laugh for Jared’s benefit, but it came out loud, brittle and over-bright. ‘You know me. Always busy. Too busy for anything more and that’s not going to change any time soon.’ The world’s worst fibber. ‘Don’t worry, he’ll be gone and it’ll be over before you know it.’
‘What about the business?’ he said. ‘I hope you—’
‘Of course. Priority number one, but, as I used to tell you often enough, all work and no play.’
‘Just. look after yourself.’
‘Always.’
‘We love you.’ Gruff and stern. Not happy. Not happy at all.
‘Love you too.’ She did. She really did. But she forced a sunny-as-you-go smile into her voice. ‘Bye for now.’
She disconnected, leaned back and closed her eyes, moisture clinging to her lashes. Let him get used to the idea. No surprises when he came home from overseas.
Blake might already be gone by then.
Relax. Breathe. Don’t let Blake see you like this.
So while she got her emotions under control she reminded herself of the conversation and why she needed to listen to her head and not her heart. She didn’t need Jared to tell her Blake wasn’t the right man for her. Not long term.
She’d want too much from him—already wanted too much—and an ongoing relationship with a man who lived a million miles away on a boat just wouldn’t work. It was vital for her own well-being that she accepted their liaison for what it was and lived the next few weeks accordingly.
A short-term affair.
Blake leaned a shoulder against the open doorway and watched Lissa through narrowed eyes. He couldn’t see her face from this angle but she’d disconnected and stretched out as if she didn’t have a care in the world.
He’d been about to step outside when he’d heard her spill the status of their relationship to her brother.
He’ll be gone and it’ll be over before you know it. He’d seen the flip of her hand as she said it. Chuckled it even.
Amused and casual about it all, was she? She’d been anything but amused and casual last night, he remembered darkly.
She’d told it how it was—fun and games for as long as it lasted. A wild, crazy no-strings affair, he’d heard her tell Jared.
That was what Blake wanted too, he told himself. And what better way to de-stress than a fling with a gorgeous, fun-loving woman who knew where they stood? It had always worked before.
So why did he feel as if he’d been trussed with barbed wire and tossed overboard into a storm-ravaged sea?
He was a navy man, he reminded himself. He knew how to swim. Tension coiling through every muscle in his body, he pushed off the door frame. ‘Food’s cooked,’ he said. ‘You about ready to eat?’
She jumped at his voice and scrambled upright. ‘Sure am.’ Facing away from him, deliberately, he guessed, she rose, all loose-limbed grace, and stared at the tangerine-smeared sky.
‘I never tire of this view.’
‘Me neither,’ he agreed, willing to stand there for however long it took and watch her with the balmy breeze carrying her scent to his nose and the languid sound of a clarinet drifting from a house across the river.
Then she turned and she was smiling and the force of it hit him smack in the chest. He rubbed a hand over the tender spot, then said, ‘I’ll miss it when I go.’
Her smile remained but something in her eyes changed. His words had hit their intended target and he wished he’d kept his mouth shut. He wished he knew what she was feeling.
He wished to hell he knew if he was the only one suffering the same gut-rending, devastating force that held him motionless.
Rubbing her upper arms, she glanced away over her shoulder, as if a chill were stalking her. ‘It’s gorgeous outside. Why don�
�t we eat by the pool?’
They shared a bottle of white wine with their meal as the violet dusk settled into night and the insects chittered. He lit the tea candles he’d brought out with them so he could enjoy the way the light glinted on the gold highlights in her auburn hair.
He didn’t pay much attention to their conversation. He was too distracted by the sound of her voice and the way her hands moved as she talked and his own thoughts racing inside his head.
Until she said, ‘Gilda was telling me how you saved her life. She had other good things to say about you too.’
Thanks a lot, Gil. What he didn’t need right now was to have his life dissected, however well intentioned. The less Lissa knew, the less involved she’d be when he left. ‘I just did what anyone would have done.’
She spread her hands on the table. ‘I guess you’ve saved a lot of lives over your time in the navy.’
He shifted, uncomfortable with the conversation, and poured himself another glass of wine, drank half of it straight down. ‘It goes with the job.’
‘And do you—did you—like your job?’
‘It has its moments.’ He’d been thinking a lot about that over the past couple of weeks. He’d reached his personal horizon as far as the navy was concerned. It had been time to leave and plot a new course for his life.
‘So why did you join the navy?’
‘I always loved the sea. Its vastness. The solitude.’
‘Solitude? In a navy vessel?’ She grinned.
‘Yeah, okay, you got me there.’
‘I still remember when you left. Here one day, gone the next.’
He shook his head. ‘Not quite but it might have seemed that way.’
‘Heartbreaker,’ she murmured. ‘I cried for a week.’
He stared at her, remembering the young teenager and felt. odd. He was still uncomfortable by the whole idea that she’d more than likely projected her sexual fantasies onto him, a guy nine years her senior. ‘You did not.’
She lifted a shoulder. ‘Okay, maybe it was only a couple of days, but I might have if I… Not after. Never mind,’ she finished quietly. ‘It’s not important.’
And as if Lissa had conjured her up, an image of Janine shimmered in front of his eyes. The Ghost of Mistakes Past. His mood darkened. ‘Don’t stop now, it’s just getting interesting.’ He drained his glass, leaned back and gestured for her to continue.
She was silent a moment, then said, ‘Okay. I’m not going to pretend I didn’t hear the rumours.’ Her voice was as soft as the evening air.
‘Why would you?’
‘To spare you pain … or embarrassment maybe?’
He shook his head. Not pain, not any more. He’d taught himself not to react every time he thought of Janine. Not embarrassment because he didn’t give a rat’s ass what others thought they knew. ‘Don’t spare my feelings, Lissa. Either you believe the gossip-mongers or you don’t.’ Watching her, he reached for the wine bottle, raised it to his lips but didn’t drink.
‘I didn’t really know you back then. You weren’t real. You were more a. fantasy.’ She looked down at her hands, then back at him. ‘But I’m beginning to know the man you are now. You’re kind and generous, you’re a good listener, you care about others—’
‘But you don’t know whether to believe the rumours or not.’
She lifted her glass, sipped from it, set it down again. ‘Of course I don’t believe them.’
Was she telling the truth about how she felt? Or was it a carefully disguised attempt? He realised that what she thought mattered to him a great deal more than he’d have liked.
‘You can’t decide,’ he said, watching her. ‘You want to believe they’re lies but deep down inside you, there’s always been that doubt. Who is Blake Everett? Not the man you wanted to see, but the real man? Could he make a girl pregnant then walk away? Could he walk away from his own child?’
‘Stop it, Blake.’
‘And now we’ve had sex, you think a bit further. and you wonder, what if, just once, your pills don’t work? You ask yourself, ‘Would he walk away from me? Would he leave me to raise our child alone?’’
She shook her head, closed her eyes. ‘Stop.’
‘Maybe I could walk away. Maybe my upbringing convinced me that alone was best, that responsibility didn’t matter.’ He turned the bottle in his hands, studying the distorted image of the burning candle through the glass. Everyone had their own way of looking at things.
‘Or perhaps back then, I simply made the problem go away. Don’t tell me that never crossed your mind.’ He looked into her eyes, read the answer.
‘Blake, please, I know you better now.’
He picked up her glass, downed the rest of her wine in one long swallow and said, ‘Let me tell you about Janine.’
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Y‘OU don’t have to. I know you’d never do what they say you did.’
He challenged her clear-eyed gaze. ‘Maybe I want to set the record straight.’ For you at least. He cared more than he wanted to what Lissa believed and what she thought about him.
He looked up, away from the warm distraction before him, to the cold blue emotionless stars. ‘I met Janine at the beach. She asked me about life-saving. Said she was interested in joining. She lived in a small apartment on the edge of town and was studying law and pulling late-night shifts at a nearby club to pay her fees.
‘Her body was every teenage guy’s fantasy but she didn’t even seem to be aware of it. She had a freshness about her and a keen mind and I found the combination irresistible.
‘We started dating. I saw her every day for lunch and in the evening before she had to go to work. We were together for two months. The houseboat didn’t feel right so I told her I intended getting us a bigger place and supporting her so she didn’t have to work nights. I’d already bought and sold my first property and was making a reasonable income at the dive shop.
‘But before we’d met I’d arranged to sail from Perth to Port Lincoln. I wanted to test my sea legs and the Great Australian Bight has some of the world’s roughest seas. Throw in some scuba diving and I was supposed to be gone five weeks. She cried all over me the day before I left and told me how much she loved me and how she couldn’t bear to be without me. I cut my journey short by ten days for her.
‘Then a week later she told me she was pregnant and that we needed to get married fast. I hadn’t known who her parents were until then. She’d kept very quiet about her privileged upbringing.’
Lissa frowned, doing the calculations. ‘How pregnant?’
Exactly. ‘She didn’t say and it didn’t occur to me to ask. She said it didn’t matter since we loved each other and I’d forget the navy now we had a baby on the way.’ He blew out a breath. The old pain still had the ability to crush. ‘You know, she nearly had me. Then I saw her due date on a report she’d carelessly left inside a pregnancy advice book on her bedside table. There was no way I could have been the father.’
He’d been devastated. He’d let himself be drawn into love only to be betrayed again. It had been the last time.
He jerked himself out of the memory. ‘So I did some quick investigating. Turned out her night shifts hadn’t been of the waitressing kind. I went to Sydney and joined the navy a week later.’
‘How could someone do that?’ Lissa’s voice seemed to come from a long way away.
‘Quite easily, it would seem.’
‘Blake, I’m …’ Lissa swallowed. He wouldn’t want her pity. ‘That must have been tough.’ She reached out and covered his hand with hers on the table and felt him flinch.
Before she could think of how to tell him she understood his anguish, she stopped. Because she didn’t understand. She had no idea how he felt. Whether he’d have given up his navy dreams to be a father. To make a home with her and the baby.
He pulled his hand away, flexed it at his side and rose abruptly. ‘I’m going for a run.’
Lissa’s heart ached on his
behalf. She’d tried reaching out and he’d rejected that, so she just said, ‘Take care,’ as he stalked away.
There was a coolness in the air and it wasn’t just the evening’s breeze from the river. Janine’s deception had broken something inside Blake and talking about it tonight had scraped at the old wounds. She knew he needed that alone time.
She cleared the dishes, hoping Blake would come back soon and she could see how he was. When he didn’t, she went to the room where she’d set up her artwork. She pushed the window wide to let in the evening.
Ears strained, she listened for the sound of Blake’s footsteps on the pavement. She could hear nature’s soft night music, the distant sounds of a party in progress. The frangipani’s scent from outside mingled with the tang of turpentine and charcoal.
With a sigh, she tucked her legs beneath her on the tarpaulin she’d set on top of the carpet, letting her gaze meander through the window to the river with the spill of moonlight shimmering like pearl beads on black velvet.
The moonlit scene reminded her that she loved working with black and white. She opened her sketch pad. If only problems were as clear-cut. She selected a black pencil with a blunt smudged tip and drifted it at random over the blank page.
She wasn’t aware of time or her cramped fingers or the moon’s slow arc across the sky. Nothing took her attention from her work. Until she felt the hairs on her neck rise.
For a few seconds she froze, remembering how Todd used to creep up on her, finding it funny to see her jump.
She looked over her shoulder. And her heart started beating again. Blake.
‘I startled you.’
‘Only a bit. I’m all right.’
He watched her a moment without speaking.
‘You okay?’ she asked.
He barely nodded.
No words could describe the moment. The way he looked at her. The way she felt. No words necessary as he crossed the room and stretched out behind her on the tarp. No words spoken as she turned and slid down beside him.
