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‘If he’s a decent man, there’s no way he’d betray you to that—that animal!’
‘He is a decent man, and that’s what worries me. I’ll be going into a relationship with him, however casual, under false pretences—knowing it can never go anywhere, that I could never marry him. Oh, I know I’m looking too far ahead, and we might never get that far in our relationship, but if we do…’
She broke off, unable to put into words the uncertainty she felt.
‘What if you enjoy the present and let the future take care of itself, love?’ her father suggested, covering her hand with his and giving her fingers a squeeze. ‘You had precious little happiness in your life with Dennis, for all your insistence he wasn’t always the way he turned out. You deserve all the love that comes your way. Go for it, and we’ll sort out what needs to be sorted out when and if it happens.’
Annie felt her heart lift at her father’s assurance, though some doubts remained. Plenty of doubts!
Alex was as good as his word, arriving early evening, freshly showered and shaven and slightly less tired-looking, wearing black jeans and a charcoal polo shirt and looking so—so manly that Annie felt her heart skip with excitement, the way it had when she’d been a teenager on one of her very first dates.
‘You’d better come in and meet the author,’ Annie suggested, when they’d both stood awkwardly on the doorstep for far too long.
‘I’d like that,’ Alex replied, and Annie relaxed. For a moment there she’d thought it was all going to fall apart—her with her skipping heart, dry mouth and brain that refused to function, and Alex thinking who knew what about the dummy who’d opened the door.
Primed to say nothing about the past, Rod Talbot greeted Alex easily, but Annie knew his sharp eyes were taking in the man, and his writer’s mind would store all the conversation for perusal later.
‘Annie tells me you’ve read some of my books. I hope they haven’t had you cursing over the author’s ineptitude.’
‘On the contrary,’ Alex said. ‘I’ve found them good fast reads. Totally engrossing. And though I don’t as yet know Sydney, you paint a picture of a fascinating city.’
‘It is that!’ Rod said, and Annie smiled to herself, remembering the hours she and her father had spent exploring the city when he’d first decided to set his mysteries here.
She watched Alex as he chatted to her father, bringing up scenes from the books he’d read, asking questions about writing.
‘Can you type or do you use a voice-activated programme on a computer?’
Her father held up his hands.
‘Tactful way to ask the question,’ he answered. ‘Rheumatoid arthritis—terrible disease. Started out thinking I’d save my hands—had knuckle replacements and all, but no good came of them. No, the voice programme works for me. You have to train them, you know, to your own voice and words, but Katy—I call mine Katy—makes me feel as if I’ve got a secretary. Katy knows me nearly as well as Annie does.’
‘Dad also runs a tape recorder, so if something happens to the computer version of the story, he’s got it on tape.’
‘But what about changing things—going back over to take something out or put something in? I have to do that all the time just writing a paper, so that must be hard.’
‘I have a real secretary for that,’ Rod explained. ‘She comes for three hours every afternoon and we tidy things up. I can type a bit so I do some of that part as well.’
‘And you’re fairly mobile? Able to transfer yourself? Do you drive?’
Annie smiled to herself. She’d heard Alex ask the parents of his patients personal questions that seemed unrelated to their child’s condition, but knew he liked a whole picture of the family, saying it helped him see what stresses might arise later when they were responsible for caring for their convalescing child.
Her father seemed untroubled by Alex’s interest, explaining he could take care of himself, just used the chair for mobility because his hip joints made walking both painful and risky. But, yes, he drove—had a lift on the car to put his wheelchair on the top of it, and used hand controls fixed to the steering wheel.
‘It’s the very latest system. Would you like to see it?’
‘I would,’ Alex said, and Annie started planning dinner. Her father was enjoying Alex’s company and Annie knew Alex was genuinely interested, not just trying to make a good first impression. In fact, she doubted it would occur to Alex that he was making a good impression.
‘We may as well eat here,’ she said, when they returned an hour later—her father having taken Alex for a drive to show him how the car worked.
Alex began to protest, but Annie shook her head.
‘We can go for a walk after dinner,’ she told him. ‘After all, you cooked for me last night—why shouldn’t I cook for you?’
Henry, who’d greeted Alex earlier, sniffed around him, looking for Minnie, and not finding her had gone to bed, now heard the magic word ‘walk’ and appeared from the laundry where he slept.
‘Not you,’ Annie told him.
‘Best you take the dog,’ her father said, but Annie ignored the comment, instead instructing the men to sit down and asking Alex what he’d like to drink.
‘Dad and I will both have red wine. Would you like a glass or would you prefer something else?’
‘A glass of red would be great,’ he said, and went on to mention some of the Australian red wines that had become his favourites.
‘Lucky you,’ Annie told him, showing him the bottle before she poured. It was on the top of his list!
‘So we’ve similar tastes in red wine at least,’ he said, smiling at her, though with a rueful look in his eyes as if to apologise about this ‘first date’.
But the evening, for Annie, was just perfect. Alex seemed right at home, discussing books and wine and making them laugh at the things he’d found hard to understand when he’d first arrived in Australia.
‘Just because we speak the same language, we assume we understand each other,’ Annie said, about to recount an anecdote about her early days in the US then remembering she shouldn’t. She changed the conversation to pronunciation differences, talking about New Zealanders and South Africans rather than Americans, but she guessed Alex had caught the conversational shift.
It was impossible, she decided. She couldn’t go out with Alex, not if it meant pretending she’d never lived in the US. Not if it meant never acknowledging she was the woman he’d danced with on the terrace. How could they ever be at ease if that knowledge lay unspoken between them, yet how could she explain—tell him about that night—without telling him more?
She looked at him, his craggy face alive with intelligence and good humour as he explained the intricacies of American football to her father. Everything she knew of Alex indicated he was a good man—firm and demanding of his staff but quick to praise their efforts. Honest in his dealings with his patients’ parents, yet empathetic as well, so they trusted their children’s lives to him and knew he’d do his best.
But he wouldn’t tolerate sloppy work, or anyone doing less than their best. She also knew, instinctively, he wouldn’t tolerate deception, and what else would a relationship between them be?
She cleared away the dishes while Alex drew a diagram of a football field in the notebook her father always carried, and talked about offensive plays and touchdowns. By the time her father had learnt all he needed to know to enjoy the American football games he watched on cable television, Annie had stacked the dishwasher and put a plate of cheese, fruit and biscuits on the table.
‘No more food!’ Alex protested. ‘In fact, I think it’s time I walked off some of that delicious dinner.’
He turned to Annie.
‘You mentioned the beach, and I know it’s not far away. Shall we go there for our walk? I’m happy to drive if you direct me.’
Annie hesitated.
‘You go,’ her father said, no doubt aware of all the machinations of her mind.
Annie nodded, thinking the beach would be as good a place as any to tell Alex what she had to tell him. To tell him she didn’t think even a getting-to-know-each-other relationship would work.
‘I’ll just get a jacket. I can duck up the back lane and meet you at your car,’ she said, but Alex shook his head.
‘I’ll wait for you. We’ll go together. We’ll sneak away without our respective dogs knowing what we’re up to.’
Annie slipped upstairs, heart again skipping with excitement although she kept telling it this was the end, not the beginning.
Alex drove easily, and in one of life’s little miracles they found a parking space not far from the wide concrete steps that led down to the beach. It was after eleven and only a few people wandered along the broad strip of sand, although a scattering of couples and groups, drawn to the soothing sounds of the surf, were walking on the promenade.
Annie breathed deeply, drawing the damp, salt-laden air into her lungs.
‘I love standing by the Pacific and thinking the next big lump of land it hits is America. I love the idea that the water in a wave I’m watching here might one day, depending on the currents, wash across a beach in California.’
Alex put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her body closer to his.
‘Should we talk about the big lump of land that is America? About North America in particular?’
Annie sighed.
‘We should, Alex,’ she said, relishing his warmth and closeness, wishing with all her heart this could be a real ‘first date’ so they were coming together with nothing but expectations of fun and pleasure—with no baggage from the past. ‘But I’m not sure that I can. Or ought to…’
She couldn’t go on, couldn’t come right out and say, I’m living a lie.
‘Then we’ll walk,’ he said, his voice strained. ‘But one day, Annie, I hope you’ll feel you can trust me well enough to talk.’
His disappointment in her was so obvious, it cut into Annie like a scalpel.
‘Maybe we shouldn’t even walk,’ she muttered, but Alex was already guiding her towards the smooth wet sand where the waves finished their journey across the Pacific. He released her for a moment to slip off his shoes and turn up the bottoms of his jeans, and she bent and took off her sandals. Then, with his arm around her shoulders once again, they paddled through the shallows to where the beach ended in a high tumble of rocks that stretched, like the humped back of some fossilised sea creature out into the waves.
And in the shadow of the rocks he turned her towards him and drew her body close to his, then bent his head and kissed her with a mastery his previous kisses had ensured.
Annie was surprised at how familiar his body felt, how at home she felt in his arms. And the kiss. It was a different kind of magic—sweet, gentle and seductively addictive.
Until the first easy exploratory moves were done! Then the attraction she felt for Alex fired a need so deep and filled with longing she couldn’t pretend, even to herself, that this was just a casual, first-date kind of kiss. This was a kiss that sent tendrils of desire spreading through her body, seeking out the deep-hidden places and bringing nerves and flesh to life with a tingling, trembling, pleading anticipation.
Somewhere there was noise. Loud noise. Annie hoped it wasn’t her making it—whooping and crying out as her body delighted in Alex’s embrace. Then Alex gently put her from him.
‘Someone’s in trouble,’ he said, sounding as breathless as she felt. At that moment Annie saw the source of the noise, a young man standing on one of the humps of rock, calling for help.
‘Someone swept off the rocks,’ she guessed. ‘Fishermen usually.’
They were both scrabbling towards the lad who was still yelling for help but not offering any more information until Alex reached him.
‘It’s Dad. He slipped and backwash carried him out. I can see him in the surf but I can’t reach him.’
Other beach-walkers were gathering on the sand at the base of the rocks.
‘I’ve called triple O,’ one said.
‘My wife’s run back to the lifesavers’ clubhouse. There’s usually someone there.’
Alex had pulled on his shoes and was accompanying the youth back to where his father had disappeared. Annie followed more slowly, barefoot, because her sandals would be worse than useless on the rocks.
‘I can see him,’ Alex told her, ‘but he’s being buffeted by the waves and hitting against the rocks. He needs to swim out beyond where the waves break and wait for rescue there.’
Alex called to the man, telling him to swim away from the rocks, but he either couldn’t hear or had already been injured and the best he could do was stay afloat. Before Annie realised what was happening, Alex was stripping off his clothes, thrusting first his shoes, then his trousers and shirt at Annie, telling her to hold them.
Then he walked out to a high, dry rock and was about to dive when Annie yelled at him.
‘Jump, don’t dive. It might be shallower than you think.’
So he jumped, while Annie held her breath, first until he surfaced then again until he reached the man and together they swam beyond the curling breakers. She refused to think about the sharks that cruised these shores, or of the way a freak wave could lift the pair and throw them up onto the rocks. Her mind concentrated on willing them both to stay alive.
Then she heard the roar of the jet skis and knew help was on the way, but she still watched tensely as the first jet ski stopped, the driver dropping a flotation device to Alex then lifting the fisherman onto the back of the seat. The driver of the second jet ski helped Alex aboard, and the two machines roared off towards the beach.
Annie followed more slowly, having to pick her way across the rocks, clutching Alex’s clothing to her chest. They smelt of him, she realised as she drew warmth and comfort from objects as mundane as a pair of jeans and a shirt. Then she shivered as her body lit again with excitement, imagining enjoying the scent of the man himself just as intimately.
Get real, girl! It’s not going to happen. It can’t happen.
Can’t it?
The mental argument took her to the clubhouse where Alex, wrapped in a blanket, was waiting for her.
‘Much quicker to get a ride back,’ he teased as she passed over his clothes. And seeing him there, alive and well and teasing, made her remember the clench of terror she’d felt when he’d gone into the water, and she had to bite back an urge to yell at him for being so foolhardy.
‘I’m OK,’ he said gently, taking her hand and pulling her close enough to drop a kiss on her hair. ‘I’m a strong swimmer and could see the safe way to approach the man, or I would never have gone in.’
‘OK,’ Annie conceded, but he wasn’t completely off the hook. ‘But don’t go doing that kind of hero stuff again! Not when I’m around anyway.’
She thought about it for a moment, then added, ‘No, not even when I’m not around. You’re far too important to too many people to be putting yourself in danger. And don’t bother telling me there was no danger. I was there. I saw it.’
He touched his hand to her shoulder.
‘I’ll grab a quick shower and get dressed. The lifesavers offered coffee. Do you want a cup?’
Annie shook her head. The words she’d just spoken about Alex putting himself into danger were echoing in her head, together with an insistent little voice suggesting she might be doing it herself—putting Alex into danger by associating with him.
Dennis dangerous?
To her, most probably, but to someone else?
She didn’t know.
Yet acts in their past and his persistence in trying to find her suggested it was a possibility. It certainly wasn’t to finalise divorce proceedings, because she’d started them herself and through a string of different lawyers, all protecting her confidentiality, had had papers served on him.
But all that had done had been to increase the pressure of the private investigators on the family she and her father had left behind.
‘Stop frowning. I’m fine!’
Alex’s return brought her back to the present.
‘Yes,’ Annie said, vowing inside herself that she’d have to keep things that way.
This resolution weakened somewhat when he drove his car into the garage behind his house then walked her home down the back lane, no doubt aware of the privacy its dark seclusion offered.
And when he kissed her, which he did at intervals all the way along the lane, Annie’s resolve weakened, and she found herself arguing, mentally, that everything would be all right.
CHAPTER SEVEN
