In Bed with Her Ex

by Lucy Gordon

  He glanced out of the window at the rain-washed world, at the undulating paddocks, the vast, spreading gums lining the driveway, the shimmer of the sea in the distance.

  He and Mardie had spent a magical childhood in this place. Wandering the farm, the beaches, the harbour. Surfing, rabbiting, messing round with boats, nothing to contain them.

  But he needed to work. In Africa he’d made a difference.

  No more.

  He glanced out of the window again. Mardie was heading up the drive on the tractor, towards the shattered tree. Chainsaw on the back. Bounce running along behind.

  A husband, dead. A mother cared for.

  A wasted life?

  It was unfair. He needed to apologise.

  He already had. There was nothing more to be said. She wanted him to leave.

  He couldn’t leave yet. He’d work with her one last time.

  He’d make amends if he could.

  Bessie stirred on his knee, her blind eyes staring at nothing, white clouds of fog.

  ‘Maybe we’re both blind,’ he told her.

  Me, me, me. Wrong attitude. To be feeling sorry for himself when this dog was in such need.

  Self-pity helped no one. He needed to help Mardie. He needed to sort the fate of Bessie. He needed to make some phone calls.

  And then he needed to leave.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THE tree had spilt straight down the middle. The scorch marks from the lightning formed a vicious slash down the side of the trunk still standing and the ground around the base was scorched black.

  She loved the trees down the driveway, a sentinel of mighty gums a hundred years old.

  She felt like crying.

  Not just for the tree.

  What was he doing, walking into her life again with his stupid, hurtful judgements? What crazy twist of fate had him crash his car where hers was the closest house?

  Seeing him stand in her kitchen … in the bathrobe she’d bought for Hugh …

  It made her feel tired and old and ill.

  And also immeasurably sad. Her first sensation on seeing him again had been joy. Then, as she’d stood in the rain last night, holding the ladder while he fought her drainpipe, the joy had turned to something else. Something inexplicable.

  A resurrection of what she’d once felt, or something more?

  It didn’t matter what she’d felt. She didn’t need his judgement.

  Work was her salvation. If she worked hard enough she didn’t have to think. This tree would take weeks to clear, but she’d do enough now to clear the drive.

  She attacked the smaller branches first, slicing them free and dragging them clear. After chopping the main branches for firewood, she’d be left with a pile of leaf litter. She’d use it eventually for mulch, but first she had to get it into a clear space so at the height of summer she didn’t risk fire as it rotted and heated.

  It was heavy work, heaving branches onto the trailer on the back of the tractor, but work was what she needed to defuse anger.

  Work had always been her salvation. When her mother grew sicker. When Hugh died.

  When Blake left.

  How could she put Blake leaving alongside her grief for her mother, for Hugh?

  She’d been sixteen. It couldn’t have hurt as much.

  She still remembered it though. Blake walking away.

  She wanted to cry.

  She didn’t.

  It was just … him walking back. Reminding her of what she’d lost.

  She hadn’t lost anything. She especially hadn’t lost Blake.

  She’d never had him.

  The chainsaw sliced through a protruding branch. She stepped back smartly as it crashed from the broken trunk.

  It was hauled away before it hit the ground.

  She turned, and Blake was there.

  He was back in his dinner suit. Or most of his dinner suit. Trousers and shirt and shoes. His trousers were still soaked. His gorgeous dress shoes were muddy. His white shirt was damp, the top buttons were undone and the sleeves were rolled up. Everything clung.

  Don’t look. He made her feel …

  Don’t feel.

  He grabbed the branch and dragged it across to the trailer.

  ‘You’ll ruin your suit,’ she managed.

  ‘I can afford it.’

  Of course he could. Money had never been an issue.

  The old stories seeped back. Miss Maddock, Blake’s great-aunt. She’d arrived here in her thirties, so gossip said, cashed up, buying the lonely house out on the headland, doing it up almost as a mansion, but seeing no one. There was money to pay for upkeep, money to keep her isolated, money enough to snub the district, take a shopping trip to Sydney once a month, be as eccentric as she liked.

  Mardie was too young to remember when Blake arrived but she knew the gossip about that, too. ‘His mother’s ill. His parents have more money than they know what to do with. The aunt’s agreed to look after him until his mum gets better, heaven help him.’

  Then, as he was about to finish junior school, more gossip. ‘They’re dead in a plane cash in Italy. Blake’ll have to stay on with the old lady. Word is the parents were really rich. It’s in trust for the kid. Though how he can use it, stuck here with her …’

  The town heard a little about the plane crash, learned Blake’s father was a wealthy gambler who spent his life between casinos, learned his mother had been ‘ill’ for a long time, learned nothing else. The aunt shut up and told the town to mind its own business.

  Past history. She hauled her thoughts back to now.

  Don’t feel.

  She cut the chainsaw motor and the silence stunned her. ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  ‘It’s the least I can do,’ he said shortly, heaving the branch with a strength that put hers in the shade. ‘After offending you just about every way I can think of, I need to make amends. You want me to keep going with this while you move the sheep?’

  ‘Chainsawing’s a skill.’

  ‘Hey, I’m a surgeon,’ he said, sounding miffed, and suddenly she found herself smiling.

  And how could she not look? How could she not feel?

  He was standing in the early-morning sun, dressed in the remnants of his dinner suit. His hair was rumpled; he obviously hadn’t stopped to worry about personal grooming. He’d grabbed another branch and was about to heave.

  ‘A surgeon,’ she said, cautiously. ‘So that makes you a chainsaw expert?’

  ‘You’re saying I’m not capable?’

  ‘If you’ve been practising chainsawing on your patients for the last fifteen years, heaven help them.’

  He grinned. It lit his face, making him look younger. It made him look like the Blake she remembered.

  She felt her smile fade. Blake …

  ‘Mardie, I’m sorry.’ He wasn’t coming close; there was half a ruined tree between them. ‘I barge back into your life, I make stupid assumptions, I insult you, I try and land you with a blind dog …’

  ‘Plus you didn’t make the bacon crispy,’ she retorted. ‘I can forgive anything else.’

  ‘I didn’t …’

  ‘Whatever you’ve been doing in the last fifteen years, it’s not been cooking. Are those clothes very uncomfortable?’

  ‘They’re fine.’ He paused, looked down at his sodden trousers, gave a rueful grimace. ‘Okay, they’re appalling.’

  ‘I could lend you …’

  ‘I don’t want any more of your husband’s clothes.’

  ‘You didn’t appreciate the bathrobe?’

  ‘The bathrobe’s excellent—although dry jocks would add a little something, even to the bathrobe.’

  Dry jocks …

  She blushed.

  How long since she’d blushed? Her blushing used to kill her as a teenager. She thought she was over it.

  She wasn’t. She blushed. Over the mention of jocks. What, was she thirteen again?

  ‘Hey,’ Blake said, and suddenly his attention was no longer o
n her. Which was just as well. The blush was taking a while to subside. He stooped and peered at the slab of trunk that had peeled away. ‘Look at this.’

  She looked—and she blushed some more.

  At ten years old, before she had any idea of vandalism, of desecration of trees, maybe before she had any sense at all, her dad had given her a pocket knife for her birthday. It had neat little tools on the side. It had her name engraved on the hilt. She’d loved that knife.

  It hadn’t always been a force for good—as displayed by what Blake was looking at.

  The carving was at the base of the tree, practically in the dirt so only she knew it was there. It was cut into the bark and it had scored deeper and deeper as the tree grew.

  M.R. xx B.M. A heart.

  Blushing didn’t begin to describe what was happening right now. She was about to go up in flames.

  Blake was grinning.

  ‘So I was dumb,’ she snapped and reverted to chainsawing. Really loud. Loud was her salvation.

  Would her blush never subside? She cut the lowest branch free, right through the middle of the initials.

  M.R. xx … nobody. A heart all by itself.

  He didn’t comment.

  They worked on, Mardie sawing, Blake carting timber.

  Her blush and her head gradually cleared, and so did the driveway.

  It would have taken her half a day to do this herself, but in an hour they had the driveway clear. The rest could be done over time. Not this morning, when she had Blake to get rid of.

  She was so aware of him …

  Stupid, stupid, stupid.

  ‘Sheep?’ he said, as she tossed the chainsaw onto the back of the tractor.

  ‘Yep. I’ll take the trailer off and head down and get them. I’ll need Bounce.’ She gave a man-sized whistle and Bounce came flying to her side.

  Bessie emerged from the house. Reached the steps. Stopped.

  ‘Can you stay with Bessie?’ she asked, but Blake was already striding back to the house. Instead of going inside, though, he lifted Bessie down the steps, set her down and then headed back, Bessie at his side.

  Mardie was removing the trailer from the tractor. Trying to block Blake out. She needed to head down the paddock and move the sheep—without a city doctor and a blind dog.

  ‘It’s rough going down there,’ she said. ‘I don’t think …’

  ‘Let her come,’ he said gently. ‘She’s breaking her heart. She could sit at your feet on the tractor. There’s room.’

  ‘And when I get down there? I need to work. I can’t …’

  ‘I’ll come with you.’ Then, instead of waiting for her to agree, he climbed onto the running board, set Bessie at Mardie’s feet and hung on himself. He looked down at Bounce, who was quivering all over, anticipating adventure. ‘Sorry, mate, you’re going to have to run behind.’

  ‘He wouldn’t have it any other way,’ Mardie managed. And stupidly she felt like blushing again.

  He was far too close. He was right … there. His shoulder was brushing her waist.

  He expected her to calmly drive the tractor with him standing on the running board?

  A woman could crash.

  What were her hormones thinking?

  Whatever they were thinking, they had nothing to do with her, she told herself. Her hormones could go take a cold shower. This guy was rude and insulting and an echo from her past she could do without.

  It was just that he was so … close.

  He’d ripped his shirt. He had a smear of mud down his face. He obviously had no shaving gear with him. His five-o’clock shadow was dark and … okay, and sexy.

  She thought suddenly of her teenage James Bond fixation. Blake as James Bond at seventeen? Not even close.

  Blake now …

  He looked a lean, mean James Bond, she thought. And he was right by her side. She and James, off to face adventure with their two sleek adventure dogs.

  Or off to move sheep with one silly pup and one blind stray.

  ‘We should have brought the Lamborghini,’ Blake said, and she glanced up at him in amazement.

  They’d always had this. The ability to read what the other was thinking, to laugh even before the other was laughing.

  She couldn’t stop herself smiling.

  ‘You want me to gun this baby?’ she demanded. ‘In fourth gear I reckon we can hit ten miles an hour. Three minutes tops from nought to ten. Who’d look for Formula One when we have my old tractor?’

  He chuckled.

  She loved his chuckle.

  She loved Blake.

  Huh?

  No! She was old enough and sensible enough to stop herself right there. Once upon a time she’d loved Blake, with all the passion of her sixteen-year-old self, but even then she’d been sensible, knowing she couldn’t follow him.

  Now the sensible side of her kicked in again. She’d loved a seventeen-year-old Blake, but that wasn’t who was standing on her running board. This guy must be what, thirty-two? He’d lived more of his life without her than with her. He had another life somewhere she knew nothing about.

  He’d made all sorts of judgements about her, and she wasn’t about to do the same to him.

  She didn’t know him any more.

  ‘Are you married?’ she asked suddenly. He was gazing out over the paddocks towards his aunt’s old house, his eyes following the route they used to travel on their bikes, sometimes half a dozen times a day.

  ‘Why do you want to know?’

  ‘Because it’s all been about me,’ she said, exasperated. ‘You’ve got my back-story, even down to the colour of bathrobe I hoped my husband liked. I know nothing.’

  ‘You know I studied medicine.’

  ‘And you know what I did. Snap. Now marriage. I’ve shown you mine, you show me yours.’

  ‘Was yours happy?’

  ‘Blake!’

  He grinned at that, a trifle rueful. ‘Yeah, I know. Unfair. It’s just …’ His voice trailed off.

  ‘You did get married?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I was engaged for a bit. It didn’t work out.’

  ‘Oh, Blake …’

  ‘Old history. I’m over it.’

  ‘Another doctor?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That makes sense.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘You wanted someone to share your life.’ She hesitated. ‘No. It was more than that. You needed someone to incorporate into your life. A marriage was never going to work on that basis.’

  Silence. Her words had been mean, she thought. She should apologise. She did in her head but not out loud.

  For some reason barriers were needed. She didn’t need to get any closer to this man than she already was.

  She needed him to get off the tractor. She needed him to stop touching her.

  They reached the gate into the Cyprus paddock. ‘Leave this one open,’ she said.

  He jumped down, and she was jolted by the sense of loss. How dumb was that?

  He swung the gate wide, waited till she was through and then jumped up again. It was a prosaic action, done a score of times a day in her life, but she could tell … His face was revealing more than he could possibly know.

  There were all sorts of sensations crowding in. The sensory experience of morning on a farm after rain … Something she almost took for granted but he’d lost fifteen years ago.

  He hadn’t lost it. He’d set it aside.

  The Blake she knew was still in there.

  The sheep were grazing near the Cyprus hedge. She’d used this paddock a few times recently and pickings were lean. The sheep headed towards the tractor as soon as they saw her coming, hopeful for hay.

  ‘You’re going to have to work for it,’ she told them, turning thankfully to practical and prosaic. ‘There’s plenty of feed in the back paddocks, so you need to move.’ She jumped down from the tractor—on the far side of Blake because there was no way she was brushing past him—and whistled
to Bounce.

  ‘Away to me,’ she called. Firmly. Hopefully.

  Eventually Bounce was going to be a brilliant working dog. He was desperate to please, and fiercely intelligent. Right now, however, he was just a bit too eager. Full of potential and hope.

  He headed clockwise round the back of the pack as per order but he rushed, he went too close to the sheep and they startled. They started scattering before he could get to the back of the mob, spreading out in bleating sheep hysteria.

  She’d have to run herself to get on the other side of them. She took off …

  And suddenly Bessie was beside her, like a shadow, running in tandem, keeping pace.

  The sheep reacted differently with the dogs. With her they were likely to run past, spread out, but Bessie’s presence gave them pause. They fell back, uncertain. Bounce finally got round the back—and they started heading the way she wanted them to go, to the open paddock gate.

  ‘Way back,’ she yelled to Bounce and he streaked further back.

  He barked.

  And then Bessie was gone from her side, flying across the paddock to join Bounce at the rear, but on this flank.

  She had two dogs at the back.

  Bounce barked again and Bessie moved further back. She was well out of reach of the flock but they knew she was there.

  How had she done that? She was blind.

  There was no time to think about it now. Mardie sprinted towards the gate to stop them veering along the fence instead of through. But Blake was already there.

  James Bond in his dinner suit, herding sheep.

  The sheep crowded towards him, saw the open gate, hesitated.

  Bessie barked.

  Bounce crowded them behind.

  James Bond held the gate.

  They rushed through, a steady stream of non-panicked sheep, and the thing was done.

  With just Bounce that might have taken her half an hour. They’d done it in minutes.

  Blake swung the gate closed. ‘How easy was that?’ he demanded, grinning in satisfaction. ‘Two good dogs …’

  Both of them looked at Bessie.

  As the sheep had flooded through the gate she’d paused, stopped. She’d have followed movement, light and sound. Now, things would simply be green again.

  She sat, waiting for some sensory cue to move again.

  Bounce headed to her side and sniffed. Rubbed himself against his new friend. Touched Bessie as she had touched him.