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He should deny it now. Tell her the truth. Hell, just looking at her in her simple jeans and Alex’s striped apron, Jude was fighting off desire so strong that it startled him. He was surprised that Emily could stand there in the same room and not be aware of his screaming lust.
Thing was, it should have been dead easy to set her straight. How hard was it to make a simple statement? By the way, Emily, I’m not gay.
All things being equal, he would have told her. Immediately. No problem.
Except … there were other factors at play here. Emily was enjoying a kind of immunity in this apartment, but if she knew the truth about him, she was likely to pick up on the attraction he felt. For all kinds of reasons, that was a bad idea.
Her trust in men had taken a severe hammering and she’d come here seeking sanctuary. Feeling safe was very important to her right now, and Jude didn’t want to upset that. This apartment offered her time-out. From men. Time to pick up the pieces after her recent relationship disaster. The last thing she needed was an awareness of a new guy with the hots for her.
Just as importantly, Jude knew he was totally crazy to entertain randy thoughts when he’d come to the city to find out what the hell was wrong with him. He needed a medical diagnosis, not a romantic entanglement with the first gorgeous girl who walked through the door.
All things considered, it was much easier and safer to simply let Emily assume that he was gay. After all, she wouldn’t be here for long, and he—
Hell. He had his life on hold until he knew what the future had in store for him.
When Emily woke the next morning she felt marginally happier. She’d slept quite well during the night, no doubt because she’d gone to bed feeling thoroughly relaxed after a pleasant evening at home with Jude.
They’d enjoyed a leisurely meal, which Jude had complimented lavishly, and then they’d sunk into comfy armchairs and read novels in the pleasantly heated lounge room while CDs played softly in the background. It had been rather cosy and undemanding, the kind of evening she’d often spent with Alex.
Now, having dressed in jeans and a sweater because she didn’t want another comment about angels and nightgowns, she wandered into the kitchen at almost nine o’clock. It was the longest sleep she’d had in ages. No wonder she felt better.
To her surprise, there were no signs that Jude was up. The kettle was cold, which meant he’d either made his cuppa long ago, or he hadn’t bothered.
She made coffee and blueberry pancakes and assembled a breakfast tray, as she had on the previous day, then knocked softly on Jude’s door. After all, bringing him breakfast was the least she could do when he was hard at work and generously sharing his living space with her.
He didn’t answer to her knock, which was another surprise. She wondered if he was in some kind of artistic frenzy, typing madly as the clever words flowed straight from his imagination through his fingertips and onto the keyboard. He might be very angry if she interrupted.
Then again … he’d welcomed the breakfast she’d prepared yesterday. She knocked again, less cautiously this time.
There was a muffled growl from inside.
‘Jude, would you like coffee and pancakes?’
At first he didn’t answer, but then the door opened slowly and Jude leant a bulky shoulder against the door frame. He was wearing black boxer shorts and a holey grey T-shirt that hugged his muscly arms and chest. His eyes were squinted as if the muted light in the hallway was too bright.
His dark hair was tousled into rough spikes, his jaw covered in a thin layer of dark stubble, but it was the glassy strain in his eyes that told Emily he was in pain.
‘I won’t bother with breakfast this morning,’ he said dully. Then, added as an afterthought, ‘Thanks, those pancakes look great, but I’m not hungry.’
‘Are you unwell?’
‘Headache.’
‘Oh, gosh, I’m sorry. Is there anything I can get you? Do you need aspirin? Camomile tea?’
A ghost of a smile flitted over his face and he started to shake his head, then grimaced, as if the movement was too painful. ‘I have medication. Don’t worry, I’m used to this. I’ll hit the sack for an hour or so and then I should be fine.’
Clearly, Jude didn’t want to be bothered by any more questions, so Emily tiptoed away, leaving him to rest, but she felt disturbed and worried. She’d experienced guys with hangovers, but Jude hadn’t been drinking, and he’d said he was used to these headaches. How awful for him.
A pool of morning sunlight on the balcony beckoned, so, feeling unaccountably subdued, she ate her breakfast at a little wrought-iron-and-glass table, with Thorn in the Flesh propped against a pot plant. She finished the last two chapters while she ate.
Jude’s story was wonderful. Not only was there a fabulously thrilling chase at the end to catch the bad guys, but there was also a lovely and poignant romantic finale for the deserving hero and heroine. She marvelled that a gay man could portray the male-female emotions so perfectly.
There was only one problem. When Emily put the book down, she came back to earth with an abrupt and unhappy thud. Her own romances had never finished happily. Every one of them had ended suddenly and miserably, leaving her to feel like The World’s Greatest Romantic Loser.
She couldn’t help wondering if there was something crucially wrong with her personality. Some genetic defect that caused her to always fall for the wrong man.
All she wanted, really, was to be like her parents, to find one person to love, one relationship to feel safe inside. She’d grown up watching their warmth and affection and she’d listened many times to their story of how they’d met at a country dance and married young, never regretting their decision.
Even her brother Jack had been lucky in love. He’d married his high school sweetheart, Kelly, a girl from a nearby farm. There’d only ever been one girl for Jack, and now he and Kelly were ridiculously happy.
Emily’s family made finding love look easy, and yet she’d tried so many times and failed. Now, she punished herself with memories, starting with Dimitri, the dark and ruggedly handsome Russian choreographer at the ballet school in Melbourne.
Having taken advantage of her youth and naivety, Dimitri had promptly dropped her overnight when he took up with one of the stars of the Australian Ballet. Emily had taken almost a year to recover from that heartbreak.
Back home in the Wandabilla district, she’d met Dave, a nice, safe farmer, and this time she was sure she’d struck gold. She would marry and live on a farm near her family, and she could envision her happy future so easily.
Dave had been as different from Dimitri as possible—practical and rough around the edges, and not the slightest bit interested in ‘culture’. She’d been happy to swap satin pointe shoes and the barre for tractors and cow manure.
But Dave’s first love was rodeos and, eventually, he’d taken off on the competition circuit, travelling to all the outback events. He’d expected Emily to throw up her job and follow him, but she wasn’t prepared to do that, she’d realised, much to her own surprise.
In western New South Wales, Dave had discovered Annie, a camp-drafting champion who shared his passion, and his phone calls to Emily had stopped.
After that, Emily had thrown herself into her work. She’d attended workshops on customer relations and marketing, and any other professional development programmes that could boost her up the corporate ladder.
When she’d dived into the dating pool—unsurprisingly, it was rather shallow in Wandabilla—she’d set herself strict rules. No longer would she be so trusting and open, and she wouldn’t allow herself to fall in love again until she met a man who ticked all the right boxes. Following her new plan, she’d never gone out with any one fellow more than a few times, and she was determined from then on that she would be the one who ended her relationships.
She had been feeling quite confident again. Before Michael had arrived in town.
Conservatively good-looking, intelligent and charming, Michael had been perfect. Emily had learned from her mistakes, however, and she’d resisted his attention at first. Michael had chased her with flattering persistence and, in the end, she’d decided he was genuine in his admiration.
And surely he was safe? He wasn’t a foreign artist or an outback drifter. He wasn’t even a local. He was a geologist from South Australia, prospecting in the Wandabilla district for a mining company.
Admittedly, Michael was only in her district for six weeks at a time, but he flew back regularly, and he always wrote to her or phoned her while he was away.
In time she was confident that he was The One.
After all, weren’t geologists clever and educated, and as solid and dependable as the rocks they studied?
What a joke.
Emily let out a long groan of frustration. And pain.
Losing Michael hurt. So much. Her pain went way beyond disappointment. She felt betrayed, used and foolish, as if she hadn’t gained one single jot of wisdom since Dimitri. And, even though she was the innocent party, she felt guilty that she’d slept with someone else’s husband and father.
She could too easily imagine how deeply Michael—no, Mark’s—wife loved him, could imagine how hurt the other woman would be if she ever found out.
Emily’s sense of gloom dived even deeper when she returned to the kitchen and saw the blinking light on her mobile phone.
Wincing at the possibilities, she clicked on her message bank and discovered five—count them, five—new text messages from people in Wandabilla.
Normally, she would try to reply, to at least thank these people for their concern, even though they weren’t genuinely close friends but mainly curious gossipers.
Today, however, there were also three voice messages from Michael-slash-Mark, and his first message was full of apologies and entreaties, begging her to ring him back.
Hearing his voice brought a fresh slug of misery and anger, and Emily almost hurled the phone across the room.
She might have done that, actually, if she wasn’t worried that the crash would wake Jude. Her gaze flashed to his novel, Thorn in the Flesh, sitting on the breakfast tray, and she remembered Morgan, Jude’s tough heroine.
Emily needed to be like her. From now on.
Smiling, she picked up the phone and deleted every single message without responding.
It felt good.
Very good, actually.
CHAPTER THREE
Mid-afternoon …
EMILY had been out to a bookshop, where she’d bought two more of Jude’s books, and she was stretched out on the sofa, deeply absorbed in a thrilling mystery set in the wilds of The Kimberley Coast when she heard Jude’s door open. Shortly after, she heard the sound of the shower in the bathroom.
Good. He must be feeling better. She was surprised by how pleased she felt about this. She even found her attention wandering from the book as she waited for Jude to emerge from the bathroom. It was suddenly important to make sure that he really was OK.
When he finally came into the living room, freshly shaved, hair damp from the shower and smelling pleasantly of lemon-scented soap, he was no longer frowning or squinting with pain, and it was almost impossible to tell that he’d been unwell.
‘Feeling better?’ Emily asked with a jolly-nurse smile.
‘Much better, thanks.’ He seemed keen to shrug her concern aside. ‘Actually, I’m heading out now.’
It was crazy to be instantly disappointed. Why should she miss Jude? She’d never been a person who was needy for company.
Annoyed with herself, she held up the book she was reading. ‘I’m really enjoying this, by the way.’
Jude saw the cover and his eyes glinted with amusement. ‘Don’t tell me I’ve acquired a fan?’
‘Perhaps,’ she said airily. ‘You’ve done a good job with Ellie. She has hang-ups like the rest of us, but she wouldn’t dare let them show. I like that about her. She’s classy. And I love that she’s blonde and leggy and carries a pistol in her handbag.’
‘Glad you approve.’ Hands sunk deep in the pockets of his jeans, Jude bowed with mock solemnity, then turned and headed for the door. ‘Don’t worry about dinner,’ he called over his shoulder. ‘It’s my turn to cook tonight.’
Emily was about to remind him that he didn’t like to cook when he looked back and she caught the ghost of a twinkle in his eye.
‘How about I bring home Thai?’ he said, then quickly disappeared before she could answer.
The front door closed behind him, and the apartment felt weirdly empty.
It was quite late, almost dark, when Jude arrived back bearing the promised tubs of takeaway Thai. They ate on the balcony, watching the last of the sunset over distant Mount Coot-tha.
‘I was wondering if you’d like to see a movie tonight,’ he asked as they ate. ‘It’ll cheer us both up.’
‘Do we need cheering up?’
He sent her a measuring glance. ‘Isn’t that why you’re here?’
‘Well, yes,’ she admitted. ‘But I’m not your responsibility, Jude. Don’t feel obliged to entertain me.’
‘I could do with cheering, too. That blasted headache left me feeling a bit out of sorts.’
‘That’s not surprising.’ Emily couldn’t shake off the lingering suspicion that there was something else, something more deeply serious that was troubling him. She didn’t know him well enough to ask, so she said instead, ‘I suppose you’d prefer to see a thriller?’
‘Would you mind?’ He offered her an apologetic shrug. ‘I’ve never been much good with chick flicks.’
‘That surprises me, actually. I thought you must watch them and study them. You write such lovely romantic scenes in your books.’
‘Do I?’ He looked suddenly caught out, almost guilty.
‘But don’t worry,’ Emily assured him. ‘I’m happy to watch a thriller. I’m certainly not in the mood for romance.’
This time when their gazes met, she thought she caught a different expression—a momentary flash in Jude’s handsome grey eyes that caught her completely on the back foot. Not at all what she’d expected from a gay man. For a moment, she’d gained the unlikely impression that he was very much aware of her—as a woman.
Heaven knew she’d read that message in men’s eyes often enough in the past. But surely she was being fanciful now? Of all the guys she’d spent time with, Jude was safe.
To her relief, he said simply, ‘A thriller it is then. There’s a really good one that just came out last week. And it will be my shout. After all, I get to count it as research.’
It was certainly pleasant to get out of the house, to wrap up and walk the frosty streets, and it was nice to know she could enjoy a man’s company without any danger of breaking her heart.
The movie, as Jude had predicted, was an exciting, edge-of-the-seat thriller, and it soon worked its magic. For close to two hours Emily almost stopped thinking about Michael.
Joy.
‘I definitely feel better for having seen that,’ she said as they left the cinema.
Jude raised a questioning eyebrow. ‘Do you want to prolong the fun? Are you in a rush to get home, or would you like to find somewhere for coffee?’
Going back to the apartment would mean returning to her solitary bedroom and her solitary one-track thoughts.
‘I’d love to stay out for a bit longer,’ she admitted. ‘I’m glad you seem to have completely recovered.’
‘So am I.’ He smiled, but the effect was spoiled by the flicker of a shadow in his eyes. ‘I’m fine now.’
Emily wished she hadn’t seen that flicker. For a fanciful second it had looked like the shadow of a falling axe. She wished she could shake off the sense that something was really troubling Jude, and she wondered if he was trying to distract himself, just as she was. It was probably a good thing she’d agreed to stay out.
They found a snug table in the back corner of a crowded coffee shop. Emily ordered hot chocolate, which came with tiny pink and white marshmallows for melting, and Jude ordered tea—Lapsang Souchong, which arrived in a ruby-glass pot, smelling smoky and inexplicably masculine.
‘You drink the same tea as your hero, Raff,’ she teased as she scooped a sticky blob of marshmallow from her mug.
Jude smiled. ‘Strange coincidence, isn’t it?’
