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‘It sounds like your favourite. Not Annie’s.’ This one didn’t look too bad. At least it didn’t turn upside down.
He crossed to the payment window and purchased a wrist-banded ride pass for both of them.
‘Come.’ He lingered over the word until she grinned. ‘We will see who is the most frightened.’
They jogged up the gaily painted steps hand in hand and Emily turned to him. ‘Can’t you feel the infectious enthusiasm from the young crowd?’
He wasn’t sure if he was infected yet. The teens were having a ball on this Friday night and her smiling face turned from side to side as she caught glimpses of the screaming occupants … and perhaps seeping some foolishness into him.
A battered little red car on rails trundled across and stopped in front of them with a clang. ‘Jump in,’ the laconic ride attendant drawled, ‘man at the back, lady between his legs. I do the seat belt.’ Marco could tell he’d said the same a million times.
This idea improved with time, Marco thought with satisfaction, as Emily snuggled into the space between his legs with her skirt smoothed out in front of her. Nice. Warm and soft and in need of protection during this coming adventure. It was a very small car.
She had to lean back into his chest and his arms came along the outside of hers to grip the same handle. Snug. The car shunted off with an unexpected jerk and Emily was forced back into his chest with a bump. He tightened his hands and prepared to enjoy the ride.
They rolled down the first hill and jolted onto a runner to be pulled up the next and then gathered speed. It blurred after that.
The first sharp corner loomed as they rocketed towards it and he read the sign just before they turned.
‘Brace Yourself!’
He braced and Emily slammed into him and he slammed into the side of the car, she laughed and he had to laugh as the next corner came up and it seemed they would sail out over the harbour, but the trusty wheels remained hooked to the track as they flew around that one.
Emily laughed again and he could feel the spread of a huge smile across his face as the ride rocketed on. Up and down steep little hills that lifted them out of their seats as they bounced at the bottom, still stuck together, and he decided then they would repeat this experience before they went home.
The car rolled to a stop. It was over. Shame, that.
‘Lady out first. Then the gent. Keep to the left and down the stairs.’
Emily waited for him to climb out, not as elegantly as he could have wished but that smile seemed glued to his face and she laughed at his expression. ‘You’d think you’d never been to an amusement park before.’
The laughter fell away. No.
He tried not to think of his lonely childhood, his family moving towns in the dead of night, and those periods of abject poverty when his father had been in gaol.
‘Oh!’ She was not slow. The smile she threw him would have lit the whole harbour in a power failure. ‘In that case, we need to really make a night of it.’
She grabbed his hand and dragged him down the stairs. ‘It’s Coney Island for you. I want to see you in the rolling pipes and if you don’t get motion sickness I’m going to stick you to the wall in the Rotor.’
And the darkness was gone. Lifted from him by the light of her joy. He followed her, soaking in her delight in silly games, ridiculous rides and fairy floss. Her hand in his, laughing and looking at him to be sure he too enjoyed the night. A strange feeling to savour that she cared so much that he was the happy one.
He kissed her as she reached the end of the wacky walkway, kissed her after the slippery slide, and leant her back into the wall and kissed her thoroughly after another ride on the wild mouse.
The most memorable kiss—though not the most successful—was upside down in the centrifugal chamber where the forces glued them to the wall while the floor fell away. They only just made it back to upright before the floor came back and gravity returned.
From there it seemed natural to walk her back to his flat, hold her as they ascended the lift, and lean her against his outside wall while he opened the door.
Emily was in a fairy floss coloured daze. She hadn’t laughed so much for years. She knew it wasn’t real, it was all an illusion like the wacky mirrors that made you first fat and then thin. She was happy at this moment and she refused to look into the future and see the end of this night.
She’d never felt so silly, so beautiful, so protected. But she hadn’t intended to come back to his flat. Tomorrow was a little too close for that.
And then they were inside and the door was shut. ‘Now, how did I end up here?’
He watched her indulgently. Like she was a child. She may have behaved like one but so had he. Make no mistake, though, she was a woman.
Marco said, ‘It is your fault. You and your amusement parks exposing me to the testosterone of teenage boys and the flirtatiousness of a woman who could be a teenager herself.’
‘I did not flirt.’
‘Did you not? Then you were yourself. Incredible, whimsical, amazing self, and I am enthralled.’
She turned her back on him. Stared through the glass across the room at the harbour and thought of stopping this right here. Not taking this to the logical conclusion for a man of the world and a woman who had always wondered what good sex would be like.
She had to remember this man was heading off to the other side of the world very shortly. But maybe that was a good thing.
His arm dropped around her shoulders. ‘Let us view the harbour.’
She glanced at his face. ‘You didn’t say come.’
‘Perhaps later.’
CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_a0dd5919-57de-5211-9c37-0f9d393a6ab8)
HE OPENED the sliding glass door and she went ahead to stand out on his terrace. A soft sea breeze ruffled her hair and he smoothed it with his hand.
The last few hours had tilted his axis. Twirled his thoughts like the rides had twirled their bodies, shifted his plans from conquest to surrender, made him see that taking this woman to bed when they had no future could harm her, and he didn’t want to do that.
Soon he would move on to the next city. Needed to. Was unable to form a trusting relationship because so much trust had been broken in the past and the scars were deep. Had crippled him for the emotional agility a relationship needed.
But he wanted her badly.
She leaned back into his body, her slender neck enticing his mouth, and he dropped a kiss under her ear. She tasted so good, felt like silk, and her body pressed back into him so that they both felt his hardness rise.
She wriggled some more and he bit back a groan as he strove to speak normally. ‘Perhaps we should go in. Would you like coffee?’
‘It’s not coffee I was thinking about.’
‘Really?’ His mind was lost to conversation. Was fixated on the woman in his arms. The need to create distance fading as the heat built between them.
He spoke into her hair. Desperate for one of them to be sensible. ‘I leave in a few weeks. I may not return.’
She spun in his arms and looked up at him. Unflinching. So courageous. Her head up. Green eyes burning like the starboard lights of ships in the night and he’d never wanted another woman more than at this moment when she offered herself to him.
Then unexpectedly she said, ‘I’m a little rusty so you’d better be good.’
And his heart cracked open just a little more. He couldn’t help the smile that pulled his cheeks and made him shake his head in wonder. Feel the pound of his heart and the jump in his groin.
‘I am good.’ Marco closed his arms around her and Emily’s silver shoes left the ground.
Suddenly she was trembling with her own audacity but it felt so good. So different from going home alone tonight and regret and an empty bed.
He spun her like she’d been spun so many times in the last two hours and the lights of the harbour blurred as he swept through the doors with her hard against his chest, carried like a child, placed her like a princess in the middle of a gorgeously pillowed bed.
She watched him and he watched her. Pulled off his shoes and socks, unbuttoned his shirt, never taking his eyes from her face, until the shirt fell open to reveal the breadth of his chest, undid his trousers so that they flapped open to reveal the curling hairs that snaked down, slid them off to reveal his black briefs. Then he stopped.
She moistened her lips. Oh, my goodness. He was the most beautiful man she’d ever seen. In black shorts, just like she’d imagined. Her throat closed and she swallowed to moisten her dry mouth. ‘I had hoped you might wear those black trunk things.’
‘So you wondered.’ He smiled at her and never had he looked more like the gypsy king as he did then with his dark chocolate eyes burning down at her. Just one word as he held out his hand.
‘Come.’
And suddenly it was easy. To reach and take his hand. To stand in front of him as he undid the covered buttons on her blouse until it too hung open. Allow his big hands to slowly slide over her hips until she stood before him in her underwear. The only indulgence she allowed herself.
The tip of one long finger slid slowly from her throat, between her lace-covered breasts, to the top of her ribboned bikini. ‘What is this delight?’
She blushed. Her secret was out but she doubted he’d be telling anybody. He’d better not.
‘Such beautiful underclothes.’ He brushed her face with his lips and bent to breathe his way down between her breasts. Tasting and murmuring. ‘Such a beautiful body.’ He looked up at her. ‘You are exquisite.’
She should be doing something. Touching him, but she didn’t know where to start. Shouldn’t be just having all the fun. Tried not to look at the bulge in the dark briefs in front of her. She hadn’t thought this far. To her inexperience. Her shortcomings as a lover. She could feel the beginnings of shame, left over from her rigid upbringing, left over from the horror of coldness and disgust from her parents the last time she’d lived with them.
She turned her head. She didn’t want to think of that. Especially now.
Marco felt the change come over her. Looked swiftly at her face, straightened and drew her against him.
‘What is it, innamorata? Sweetheart?’
‘Nothing. Kiss me.’
It was not nothing. But he would kiss her. Hold her and show her how much he wanted her. And that was all for the moment. It would be no good for him if she was not also transported.
Emily sat in the pre-dawn light on the ferry huddled into her thin wrap, lost and confused, unable to believe she’d slept with him. While her daughter lay in hospital.
She’d woken at five, spooned by a strong man’s body, the curve of her hips tucked into his heat, her lower body pleasantly aware of a new set of muscles she hadn’t used in a while and her face had flamed as erotic snapshots of their night had blown on the embers low in her belly and urged her to arch back into him.
His arm had lain heavy across her shoulders as the panic had flared. Somewhere behind the panic a little voice had whispered that no wonder this golden man was sleeping like the dead. He was right. He was good.
She’d fought to keep her movements smooth as she’d eased out from under his hand and away from his body.
He’d murmured something in his sleep and she’d pushed a pillow into his seeking hand and he’d drifted off again.
Scooped her bra from the floor and clipped it, she remembered that spot, had picked up her panties from the chair and pulled them on, and then her skirt and blouse. She’d glanced away from the chair, remembered Marco pulling her down onto his lap, and hurriedly scooped her shoes from under the bed—she certainly remembered the bed—and then she was dressed and couldn’t think past the concept that she’d been the easiest conquest in the world.
So she’d let herself out, putting her silver shoes on in the hallway, and had tapped the lift button impatiently in case he opened the door.
Now here she was. Alone, shivering, pulling into her wharf in the early morning for the first time in her life that wasn’t because of work.
An awful thought jolted as the ferry bumped the wharf and she checked her phone. No missed calls from Annie or the hospital. She sighed and thought self-mockingly, How lucky, because she suspected there had been some moments there when the whole apartment block could have come down around their ears and neither would have noticed. Would have thought it just part of the impact of making love together. Oh, my goodness, she wasn’t sure how she could regret that!
Marco woke to an empty bed. Like he did every morning, because he never asked a woman to stay. Today he had expected it to be different.
He’d heard the door shut and he opened his eyes as he sighed, slapped his forehead, and groaned. What had he done? What had she done to him? His hand slid across the remaining warmth where her head had lain and he wanted to run. He just wasn’t sure if it was as far as he could get from Sydney or after Emily.
He did neither. He sat on his terrace and nursed his espresso as he looked over the waking harbour. Imagined her hunched in the ferry on her way home, but by the time he realised she would be cold in her thin wrap it was too late to do anything but abuse his own stupidity.
Obviously she didn’t want to face him this morning, which was a damn shame because already he missed her. Missed her in more ways than he should. Regretted, of course, they had not made love one more time—because he was afraid he hadn’t quite got her out of his system. In fact, he regretted he hadn’t the chance to share breakfast, drink coffee, watch boats together.
He missed her. Missed Emily. And this was bad for a man who did not wish to stay in one place.
CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_9427eb82-ec18-516e-a39c-1eb8b005aa77)
‘HI, MUM.’ It was ten o’clock and Annie looked rosy cheeked and relaxed.
Unlike Emily, who could barely meet her daughter’s eyes. ‘You look good. How’s your tummy this morning?’
‘Not sore at all.’ Annie stroked her little belly mound. ‘And she’s moving well. You look a little stressed. Stop worrying about us. We’ll be fine.’
Oh, goodness. ‘It’s hard not to.’ More guilt. ‘But I’ll try.’ Emily looked across at June, because she didn’t know what else to say. This was ridiculous. She needed to get a grip. No one was going to know and she could just push last night to the back of her head and forget it. Ha!
‘Hi, there, June. How are you?’
‘I’m good, thanks, Emily. How cool that Annie and I are roommates.’
‘I know. That’s great. You’ll have to tell her about the calm breathing course you did.’
‘I will.’ June’s mobile phone buzzed and Emily smiled and turned back to her daughter.
Annie whispered, ‘She knows you’re not going to go mad on her for the mobile phone. We try not to let the other staff see us use them.’
Emily lowered her own voice. ‘Maternity’s fine. We’re separate from the rest of the hospital over the sky bridge and the high-tech equipment. It’s easier for the staff too rather than running portable phones everywhere. They won’t mind.’
Of course Annie had never been on this part of the hospital as a patient and her mother hadn’t thought to explain yesterday. Was that because she’d been thinking of other things? Other people? A particular person?
Annie looked relieved. ‘Oh, good. I’m almost out of credit. Can you get some, please?’
‘I think they sell phone credit at the kiosk. I’ll ask.’
‘Goodie.’ A word that reminded her how young Annie was. ‘Do you know if Dr D’Arvello is coming in this morning?
‘It’s Saturday.’ Crikey, I hope not. Her neck heated. That was the reason she was here so early. It wasn’t even visiting hours. ‘Not sure. I’ll just get that credit.’
She needed to get away for a minute and get her head together. She was a mess and she didn’t like it. This was not how she did things. She was known for her calm and serene manner, famous for it over the hospital, and at the moment she couldn’t even recognise herself.
Ten minutes later after her quick trip to the kiosk she was feeling calmer. Head down, she waited at the main lift as her mind sorted reasonable strategies for what she was going to say to Marco when she met him again.
Someone called her name. Twice. She looked up. Evie Lockheart stood next to her with a quizzical smile on her face. ‘Earth to Emily?’
‘Oh. Sorry. Hi, Evie. How are you?’ She hadn’t made that date for afternoon tea yet.
