Bushfire Bride

CHAPTER SIX

HE DIDN’T have a clue what was going on.

Hugo worked his way through half a dozen patients and maybe it was just as well there was nothing serious, because his attention was definitely elsewhere. Or maybe it’d be better if there was something serious, he decided. Maybe his thoughts needed to be hauled right back to work. Not on some slip of a doctor whose eyes made him smile. Whose smile made him chuckle…

Whose smile made him twist inside.

How long had it been since someone had made him feel like this? Some woman?

Never, he thought as he carefully wound wet bandage around Tom Harris’s arm. Tom had fallen and broken his forearm while clearing undergrowth around his house when the fires had started four days ago. Hugo had put the initial plaster on loosely because of inflammation but the arm had settled now and it could be fixed more securely into its casing.

Tom, though, was a man of few words. He didn’t want to chat, so Hugo’s attention stayed right where it was. On Rachel.

Why was it on Rachel?

She was married, he told himself. Happily married for all he knew. Sure, the man she’d been with at the dog show had seemed a creep, but the nicest of women found partners in the strangest of places. She hadn’t said a word about her marriage being unhappy.

Maybe she couldn’t. Maybe the man was violent. 106

No.

He thought back to his medical training, to the one question he’d been told could predict violence in marriages in almost every case. He’d used it time and again with sometimes astonishing results.

‘Is there any time in the last couple of years where you’ve felt afraid of your husband?’

He thought of Rachel and he knew instinctively that she’d shake her head if he directed his question at her. She’d been angry at Michael at the dog show but she hadn’t been afraid of him. She’d flung those car keys at him with such force that the memory still made him smile.

‘You thinking of the new lady doctor?’ Tom asked, and Hugo nearly dropped his bandages.

‘No. I was thinking how good this arm is looking.’

‘People don’t smile like that thinking about a sixty-year-old fisherman’s broken arm,’ Tom said dourly, though there was the hint of laughter in his eyes.

‘Why not? You have a very nice arm,’ Hugo tossed back, and Tom’s face creased into reluctant laughter.

‘Yeah, and yours is sexy and all as well,’ he retorted. ‘But I bet our Rachel has a sexier one.’

Our Rachel… How quickly had the community taken her as one of its own?

‘The lady’s married,’ Hugo snapped before he could stop himself, and Tom’s grin broadened.

‘So I’m on the right track, then.’

‘Look-’

‘It’s nothing to do with me, mate,’ Tom told him. ‘I’m just here to get an arm fixed. You’re the one who has to go home tonight and sleep in the same house. Married or not.’

Hugo shook his head, thoroughly confused. ‘I can’t…’

‘Yeah, you can,’ Tom said encouragingly, knowing exactly what he was thinking. Like it or not. ‘Or you can at least try.’

It was well past dinnertime when a weary Hugo arrived home. What a day, and there was still a ward round to do before he could sleep. Even so, he was aware of a lifting of his spirits as he walked from the hospital across the lawn to the house. It’d be different tonight. Rachel would be there.

She certainly was. He walked in the back door and instead of a formally set table, with Myra waiting to serve up chops and three vegetables-her standard fare, to be expected at least three times a week-he walked in to find Rachel packing an enormous picnic basket. Toby was sitting on the table, poking things into its depths, and his small face was lit up with excitement.

‘We’re going to the beach for tea,’ he told his father before Hugo could open his mouth. ‘Or for your tea and an after-tea picnic for us. Rachel says it’s so hot and stuffy that if she doesn’t get a swim she’ll expire.’

‘She will, too.’ Rachel was back in those extraordinary yellow clothes again. Her wonderful clothes. ‘And the dogs are going stir-crazy.’ She gestured to the two dogs, who were lying on the floor eyeing the picnic basket with a devotion that said they’d already tested the contents. ‘Have you finished for the day, Dr McInnes?’

‘I need to do a ward round before-’

‘I’ve done your ward round,’ she told him before he could finish. ‘Elly talked me through every patient in the hospital and there’s no need for you to see any of them again tonight.’ She corrected herself. ‘You might like to look in on Kim to check that her obs are still OK before you go to bed, but as of twenty minutes ago they were fine. There’s no change in the fire crews for another two hours, and things seem relatively settled. The wind’s forecast to strengthen tomorrow, which means havoc might break loose, so Toby and I figured we might have some fun while the going’s good. That’s now.’

‘The nursing home-’

‘Yep. There are a couple of oldies who need checks. Mrs Bosworth’s breathing is cause for concern. I’ve told Don we’ll stop in on the way.’

‘The way…’

‘To the beach.’

She tossed a bag of grapes into the picnic basket and beamed at him, expectant. So did Toby. The dogs looked up and wagged a tail apiece and he could swear they were beaming, too.

‘I can’t,’ he said faintly, and Rachel’s beam slipped immediately. He found himself staring at a lady with her arms crossed, schoolmarm-like, and a martial glint in her eye.

‘Why ever not?’

‘If I’m needed-’

‘You’re needed at the nursing home and Toby and I have agreed we’ll watch television in the oldies’ sitting room while you do the doctor bit. Or vice versa, but Mrs Bosworth’s anxious and she’s asking for you.’ She smiled. ‘You must have something in your bedside manner that I don’t.’ Her smile faded. ‘Or Hazel Bosworth knows you and it’s a familiar face she needs when she’s frightened. But after that… The smoke’s not so bad that it’ll be awful. We have cold sausages. We have cold drinks and fresh bread and some of Toby’s wonderful lamingtons. Your bathing costume’s already packed and we’re already wearing ours under our clothes, so what other objections would you care to make?’

Hugo couldn’t think of any. He couldn’t think of any at all. How long since he’d had a picnic on the beach?

‘Please? Can we go, Daddy? Can we go?’ Toby was jiggling with excitement. Under the table Penelope and Digger were jiggling as well.

‘Yes,’ he said promptly, before he changed his mind and got sensible. ‘Yes, we can.’

Why not?

The nursing home was quieter than they’d expected. ‘Most of the residents have seen scores of bushfires in their time,’ Don told them. ‘They’re not panicking.’ He gave a rueful smile. ‘Most of them gave up their households of precious possessions when they came in here. It makes a difference when there’s not so much to lose. Even Mrs Bosworth… Her breathing’s dreadful, Hugo. She has emphysema and we can’t get the smoke out of the atmosphere. She’s so sick. But when I told her I was going to call you she said not to bother-that the doctors would have more than enough to cope with tonight, and if she died then it was her time. Age puts a different perspective on things.’

Not just age.

It was experience, Rachel thought as Hugo disappeared to see to Mrs Bosworth’s breathing problems and she settled to wait with Toby. Once upon a time in another life she’d collected porcelain. She remembered Craig coming home from football, bouncing in the front door full of his triumph, shouting to her. Whizzing her round in triumph, crashing one of her porcelain statuettes off the hall table.

She’d been angry.

Dear God, she’d been angry.

The porcelain was long sold. It had been many years since Rachel had seen anything more important than people. Life.

Now.

This minute.

Mrs Bosworth was settling. Hugo was emerging, discussing her condition with Don. The oxygen rate was up to maximum now and he’d given her a relaxant. Fear was making her breathing faster, causing more problems.

Because, of course, there was fear. Possessions could be abandoned. But not so life.

Sometimes life was wonderful.

Life was now, Rachel thought with quiet satisfaction as they reached the shoreline. Tomorrow might well be ghastly, but for now…for now there was this moment.

The locals had too much sense to be sitting on a smoky stretch of beach. Everyone not directly committed to the fire effort was supporting those who were. Tired people chose to stay indoors.

But now was too good to waste.

The tension eased from Hugo’s tired mind almost as soon as his toes touched the sand.

The wind had miraculously dropped to almost nothing. The fine haze of eucalypt-filled smoke was even soothing. If there hadn’t been the possibility that it might threaten the town when the wind came up, he could almost enjoy it.

Or maybe he could enjoy it anyway. How long since he’d hauled off his shoes and spent the evening on the beach?

He wouldn’t have thought to do it.

Rachel had thought of it. Rachel…

‘Maybe we won’t light fires to warm our sausages,’ Rachel was suggesting, as the dogs went careering like mad things along the shore, and Hugo could only agree.

‘Wise idea. One spark and we’d have every hose in town pointed straight at us. There are people on the lookout right now. Sparks drift for miles and are a threat all by themselves.’

‘The town won’t burn, will it, Daddy?’ Toby asked, and Hugo hauled himself together. He’d been sounding too solemn.

Maybe he’d been sounding too solemn for far, far too long.

‘No. The town won’t burn. There’s no wind at all tonight so the backburners can really get things under control.’ He took a deep breath. For now-for this small fragment of time-he could forget about fires. He could even-amazingly-forget about medicine. He could concentrate on what was important. ‘Let’s eat,’ he suggested, and he could feel the tension easing out of him still more.

Rachel was smiling again, as if she knew that some invisible barrier had been broached. But it seemed she wasn’t pushing.

‘I’m swimming first,’ she told him. ‘Toby and I snacked while we waited for you. You have a sausage or two and join us-but don’t eat too much. It’d be a shame to have to wait your requisite half an hour because you were scared of cramps.’

‘That’s an old wives’ tale,’ he said, and she raised mocking eyebrows.

‘It’s the medicine my granny taught me. Are you saying my Granny’s medicine-and therefore my medicine-is wrong?’

He thought about that. He thought about the way he was feeling. Free. Almost light-headed. There was an anticipation in his heart that had nothing to do with common sense and everything to do with the way this lady smiled. Dr Rachel Harper’s medicine.

‘No, but-’

‘Good,’ she told him, her smile showing him she was aware of the fact that he was confused and she intended enjoying it. ‘Mind your sausages, Dr McInnes. Toby and I are going for a swim.’

So Hugo sat and ate and watched his small son and this strange city doctor cavort in the shallows.

Rachel was the strangest creature, he decided. She was part girl, part woman. Part professional doctor, part kid who was searching for fun and laughter.

There was so much about her he didn’t understand.

The hardest thing of all was to reconcile her marriage to Michael. To a doctor who’d risked a girl’s life…

Hugo was under no illusion that Michael couldn’t have redirected the helicopter. He would have heard the impassioned plea to return. He’d have heard how desperately ill Kim was. Hugo himself had talked to the pilot and he’d heard the pilot turn and talk to Michael. It had been Michael the helicopter had come to collect: to have forced him to stay in the air would have been nothing short of abduction.

Michael therefore must have been complicit in the decision not to bring the helicopter back to take Kim to safety.

And Michael was married to Rachel.

Rachel, who was gorgeous.

‘Hey, Toby, spin,’ Rachel was calling. Waist deep in the shallows, she had Toby high in her arms and was spinning him like the sails of a small windmill. She spun and spun while the dogs barked and barked and Hugo couldn’t stop himself from grinning in delight.

Enough. He’d eaten enough.

‘One more sausage and I’ll cramp,’ he told himself, and strolled into the water to join them. At the water’s edge he paused, laughing at the expression of joy on Toby’s face as he whirled faster and faster. Hugo chuckled out loud-and then his chuckle died.

Rachel and Toby had shed their outer clothes at the water’s edge. From where Hugo had sat thirty yards up the beach, Rachel had looked beautiful. In her crimson, one-piece bathing suit, cut to reveal every gorgeous curve, she’d been glowingly lovely.

But closer…

Closer there were scars.

He stared, caught by the incongruity of it. By the questions. The fine white lines were the marks of a skilled plastic surgeon. Hugo could see that. But no skill could entirely cover the trauma Rachel’s body must have once endured.

When? A long time ago, he thought, looking at the way the scarring had faded-fine lines blending into her near-perfect skin.

She was laughing and whirling and she and Toby turned to face him, glowing with happiness.

He didn’t get his face in order fast enough.

She stopped whirling and set Toby down on his feet. Carefully. ‘What?’ she said.

‘You’ve been hurt.’ He spoke without thinking and then could have kicked himself. He could have said nothing. He should have. He could have pretended he hadn’t noticed.

A non-medical person might not have noticed.

No. She was so lovely that any man would look at Rachel long and hard. The fine lines of scarring didn’t detract from her loveliness but they were unmistakable.

‘Car accident,’ she said shortly, answering his question before he’d voiced it. ‘Eight years ago.’

A car accident. Of course. He gave himself another mental kick. Why had his thoughts gone straight to this Michael character he was starting so stupidly to dislike?

These weren’t the type of scars that were the result of battering from an aggressive husband-and anyone could see that Rachel wasn’t a battered wife. She was probably a hugely contented wife who occasionally threw car keys at her husband. Wives did that.

Beth had thrown more than car keys at him!

But what was he thinking of? He was still staring at Rachel as if he were stupid.

‘I’m sorry,’ he told her. ‘I didn’t mean to stare. It must have been some accident.’

‘It was.’ She looked as if she was about to say more and then closed her lips together, tight.

‘Internal injuries? Fractures?’

‘You name it, I had it.’ She shrugged. ‘It was a long time ago. Bodies heal. Mostly.’

There was a depth of bitterness in her words that he couldn’t help but hear. Maybe someone had died in the accident? Someone she loved? But the blank look on her face was a shield all by itself. Keep off, the look said. Don’t go there.

So he didn’t. Even though he badly wanted to.

It was none of his business.

‘It looks like you’ve had some great corrective surgery,’ he managed, and her smile came flooding back. There was relief there and the beginnings of laughter.

‘I have, haven’t I?’ For heaven’s sake, was she laughing at his discomfort? ‘There’s a wonderful plastic surgeon in Sydney who calls me his masterpiece. I sometimes get the feeling he’d like to hang me on his wall for show and tell!’

Rachel was so damned courageous. He just had to look at that scarring to know the trauma that lay behind it. And that brief look of pain had told him there was even more…

‘You are a masterpiece,’ he said softly, and she flushed. She wasn’t giving in to her discomposure, though. She moved right on to discomfit him further.

‘You know, you’re not too bad yourself.’ She scooped Toby up into her arms and twinkled. ‘What do you reckon, Toby? Don’t you think your dad has the greatest six-pack you’ve ever seen?’

‘Six-pack?’ Toby was giggling, entranced.

And entranced was a good way to describe his father. Hugo was enchanted by this vivacious slip of a girl. She was soaking wet, her soft brown curls were lying in dripping tendrils around her face, her eyes were dancing…

‘You know six-packs,’ she told Toby, seemingly unaware of the riot she was causing in Hugo’s solar plexus. Or somewhere. Some nerve centre he’d hardly been aware he possessed. ‘Six-packs are cans of beer tied up together. You look at your daddy’s chest and tell me if it doesn’t look just like that?’

Good grief!

It was as much as Hugo could do not to blush. He swallowed, tried to think of something to say, couldn’t, so did the only thing he could think of.

He dived straight under the water and left them alone.

He stayed out of their way for about a quarter of an hour. It’s the equivalent of a cold shower, he told himself, and that was what he needed. He swam and he swam, using the rhythm of his strokes to try and settle his brain.

What was happening to him? Rachel was a married woman. She was a colleague who’d been trapped here by the fire. As soon as the wind changed and the fires burned back on themselves she’d be out of here. He had no business to think of her as he was thinking.

He had no choice. He was definitely thinking.

He swam.

It had to end some time. It had been a huge day and a man could only swim so far, regardless of what demons were driving him.

Toby and Rachel had taken themselves up the beach and were engaged in building the world’s biggest sandcastle. As Hugo towelled himself dry and strolled up the beach to join them, Rachel shifted back to admire their handiwork. She glanced up at his face-which he was still trying to control-and she chuckled.

‘Hey, don’t get your knickers in a twist by a comment on a six-pack.’ She grinned. ‘It’s what we women put up with all the time. That was the female equivalent of a wolf whistle.’

He stared. ‘Sorry?’

Her smile widened as his discomfiture deepened. ‘Sorry yourself. OK, I’m sorry about the six-pack remark but you did get personal first.’

‘So I did,’ he said faintly. ‘So I guess I’m sorry, too.’

‘Actually, I’m not sorry,’ she said with a sideways, very thoughtful look. ‘For the expression on your face-it was well worth it.’

Had it been worth it? He stared down at her and she smiled back, enigmatic and lovely and thoroughly confusing.

It couldn’t last. He might be directionless but Rachel at least was focused. Toby was lifting a football from the bottom of the picnic basket and was kicking it across the sand without much hope.

‘Given up on the sandcastle?’ Rachel asked him.

‘Yeah.’ The little boy looked down at his plastic football and sighed. ‘I brought this with me tonight ’cos Bradley Drummond says I can’t drop-kick. I gotta learn how to drop-kick and Dad can’t drop-kick for nuts.’

‘You can’t drop-kick?’ Rachel stared at Hugo, amazed.

‘I played basketball,’ he said in explanation, and she looked at him as if it wasn’t an explanation at all.

‘I can’t believe it. A man who plays basketball… What use is a six-pack in basketball?’

‘Hey!’

‘Say no more.’ She wiped her hands on non-existent trousers, and wriggled her shoulders-a player prepared to launch into a tackle. ‘A basketball player… Good grief. Toby, lad, give me the ball.’

‘Can you drop-kick?’ he asked shyly, and she nodded.

‘I was taught by the best. My husband was the world’s absolutely top drop-kicker. Or so he told me and who am I to doubt it? And he taught me.’

‘Gee,’ Toby, said, impressed.

‘Gee is right. So there you go. Drop-kick lessons coming up. And you, Dr McInnes, stop worrying and have some dinner,’ she told him. ‘You’ve hardly eaten anything.’ She flashed him a look that was almost a warning. ‘Sausages and lamingtons and grapes. Eat. For heaven’s sake, Hugo, let’s keep life simple.’

Keep life simple? He didn’t know what she was talking about.

Or maybe he did, but he sure as heck didn’t want to admit it.

It had gone way past being simple but at least it was peaceful. Miraculously his cellphone stayed silent. It might be the calm before the storm but for these few hours there seemed no medical need, and no need at all for them to rush their picnic and head for home.

With their drop-kick lessons completed to their mutual satisfaction, Rachel and Toby turned their attention back to food. They polished off sausages with gusto.

‘It’s our second dinner,’ Rachel declared, ‘and it’s much nicer the second time around.’ They ate their fill of lamingtons and finished off with a Thermos of coffee, with lemonade for Toby, and then Toby snuggled down on beach towels beside them and drifted toward sleep. One six-year-old had had a truly excellent day.

‘We don’t do this often enough,’ Hugo said ruefully, running his fingers through Toby’s sand-and salt-stiff hair. But he wasn’t totally focused on his son. He was still letting Rachel’s words drift around his head. My husband was the world’s absolutely top drop-kicker. He didn’t like it.

He didn’t want to think about Rachel’s husband.

And it seemed Rachel’s thoughts were travelling on a similar route.

‘Christine doesn’t like the beach?’

‘Christine?’ His gaze jerked to hers, startled. ‘What’s it got to do with Christine?’

‘She is the lady you intend to marry,’ Rachel said gently, and watched his face.

He said nothing.

Christine… That relationship had been on the backburner for so long that he hardly knew. When had it started? This assumption that he’d end up with his sister-in-law?

He didn’t know when it had begun. She’d just been there. Even when Beth had been alive, Christine had done the organising, acting as go-between in their increasingly turbulent marriage, suggesting, steering…

Oh, there had been nothing untoward in their relationship during the marriage. There was nothing untoward in it now. It was just drifting…

Toward marriage? Maybe. And why? Because it was easier. Because the town was waiting.

Christine was waiting.

‘It’s been six years,’ Rachel said softly. ‘Isn’t it about time you married the woman?’

‘Who told you we were getting married?’

‘Christine did,’ Rachel told him. She glanced down at Toby who was sleeping now, deeply unconscious. ‘Tonight. When I told her we were coming to the beach. I was told in no uncertain terms to keep myself to myself. I’ve never actually been given the scarlet woman treatment before, but I copped it tonight.’

For heaven’s sake. Hugo’s face set in anger. Of all the stupid… She had no right.

Did she have a right?

He hadn’t given her reason to think otherwise, he admitted to himself. Lately, Christine had taken to kissing him goodbye, and a few weeks ago he’d let himself kiss her back. Not as he’d kissed her in the past, brother-in-law to sister-in-law, but more. Man to woman.

Hell, why?

He knew why. He’d needed to so much. Just to feel the touch of a woman in his arms.

But it had still felt wrong, even though Beth had been dead these six years. So he’d pulled back. Apologised. But Christine had smiled and he’d known that she was waiting.

And he hadn’t said no. He hadn’t said it could never work. In truth, he’d been wondering…

Six years was a long time and this was a tiny town. In this confined environment he couldn’t look at a woman without that woman getting the wrong idea. Affairs were impossible. He was so damned lonely and he was hungry…

He wasn’t hungry for Christine, he conceded to himself, looking at the woman in front of him and accepting what was becoming clearer by the minute. He was hungry for Rachel.

Rachel was unavailable. What had she said about her husband? The world’s absolutely top drop-kicker… There was a wealth of affection in the way she’d said it that had been unmistakable.

Maybe Christine was all there was.

‘So you are going to marry her?’

Rachel was watching him with the air of an inquisitive sparrow. Furious, with himself as well as her, he started to haul the picnic things together.

‘I think it’s time we took Toby home.’

‘Toby’s asleep. He can’t be any more asleep at home than he is right now. And you haven’t answered the question.’

‘It’s none of your business.’

‘Mmm, but I thought we’d agreed we’d already been impolite. We may as well keep going, don’t you think?’

‘No,’ he said, goaded, and she smiled.

‘You started it.’

He had, he conceded, with his talk of her scarring. But he had no intention of continuing.

Rachel had no intention of stopping.

‘Toby doesn’t like Christine much,’ she told him. ‘Neither does Myra. Do you think Christine would soften with the brocade-remembering-Beth thing if you married?’

‘Look-’

‘I wouldn’t want to live with it.’ She stretched her legs out full length, admiring her sandy toes. She had beautiful crimson toenails.

Very distracting toenails.

‘I can see why you’d want to, of course!’ she conceded. ‘She’s lovely. Is Christine very like your wife was?’

‘Will you cut it out?’ He was half laughing, half angry. ‘Why don’t we talk about you for a change?’

‘Like what about me?’ She was still admiring her toenails.

‘Like what is it between you and your husband? You were fighting like cat and dog at the weekend. It can’t be much of a marriage.’

The laughter left her face. She’d been teasing him-it had been light-hearted banter-but suddenly there was no banter left. There was a long silence. Then…

‘No,’ she said at last, and she spoke so softly he had to strain to hear what she was saying. ‘No, I don’t have much of a marriage.’

He shouldn’t go further. He should stop this potentially hurtful conversation right now.

He couldn’t. The devil-or something-was driving him. He had to push.

‘Yet you’re criticising me for potentially making a loveless marriage?’

‘Whoa…’ Her eyes flashed at that. ‘I didn’t say a word about a loveless marriage,’ she retorted, spirit re-entering her voice with a vengeance. ‘I may not have much of a marriage but I surely went into it with love.’

‘Yet you want out?’

The conversation had become suddenly so intense he could hardly breathe. Hell, how had this happened? He watched her face and her eyes were blind, as if she was consumed by panic.

‘I’m out now, aren’t I?’ she whispered. ‘Dear God, I shouldn’t be, but I’m out.’

He didn’t know what was happening. He didn’t understand. All he knew was that he’d hurt her somehow, and hurt her badly. ‘Rachel, don’t look like that.’

‘Look like what?’

‘Like there’s something inside you that’s tearing apart.’

‘I’m not… It’s not…’

Her hands were fumbling, trying to collect the picnic things together, but he could see she wasn’t thinking of what she was doing. Her hands weren’t connected to her thoughts and her eyes were still so pain-filled that he found himself reaching out, grasping her fingers between his. Holding…

She didn’t pull away.

She didn’t move.

How long they stayed there he could never afterwards tell. The night was creeping in through the smoky haze. The sun had slipped unnoticed, behind the mountains, behind the distant fires. The beach was deserted.

All was still, apart from the soft hush, hush, hush of the waves slipping into shore, one after the other.

Endless.

Time was nothing. There was nothing. This had started as comfort-hadn’t it?-but now it was more. Deeper. For this moment there was just this man and this woman and a meeting that neither could understand, that neither wanted, that simply was.

Still their hands held. It was their eyes doing the talking, searching, locked to each other and discovering in each a link. A bond. An aching need and a knowledge that in each other pain could be assuaged.

The moment stretched on.

He should break his hold. He should release her hands, pull back…

But still his eyes searched hers and with every moment that passed the need to do more became increasingly compulsive.

Inescapable.

One man. One woman. One moment.

He pulled her into his arms and he kissed her.

What was she doing here? Rachel hardly knew. All she knew was that the moment Hugo’s fingers touched hers, her mind shut down to everything that wasn’t him.

Toby was asleep. The dogs were far off, fruitlessly chasing gulls in endless circles around the beach. There were no witnesses to what was happening here.

There was no problem with witnesses. No one would gainsay her this pleasure. Dottie had told her that as she’d packed the gorgeous lingerie and pushed her out the door to what she’d thought would be a romantic weekend with Michael.

Only it would never have worked. Even if Michael had been…nice, she could never have let him near her. The guilt had still been with her. The overriding bitterness at what could have been.

But all of that was lost the moment Hugo’s hands touched hers. He pulled her into him and as his mouth claimed hers and as she melted effortlessly into him, all she felt was joy.

Oh, the pleasure. The aching wonder. Eight years of sorrow and loneliness were all dispelled in this one kiss. In this meeting of bodies, one with the other.

It was a kiss, but it was so much more than a kiss. It was a melting of barriers, a moving forward, a reaffirmation of life itself.

She couldn’t pull away. She knew she should but she hadn’t the strength. Rachel, who’d been so strong for so long, was falling now as she hadn’t let herself ever fall. She’d been alone and now…she was home. She was where she belonged. Hugo was kissing her and she was moving from an old life into a new, like a butterfly emerging from a faded and torn chrysalis to begin a new life.

Hugo.

Life or death. Living or dying.

I choose…life.

The dogs disturbed them. The flock of gulls they’d been chasing finally wheeled out to sea. Delirious with excitement, the dogs came hurtling up the beach, soaking wet. They landed on the picnic rug and proceeded to shake what seemed gallons of seawater over everyone.

Including Toby. He woke and whimpered a little. Hugo pulled away for an instant and it was enough. To let reality in.

To let Rachel’s reality sink in.

What was she doing?

And there they all were-the old doubts, the fears and the loneliness and the endless future. They hadn’t disappeared. They’d been subsumed by the moment but they were still there.

The pressure of Hugo’s mouth was still on her lips. She put her fingers up to touch them but Hugo was before her. Toby had stirred and settled, the dogs had wheeled away again and he was catching her fingers in his lovely big hands, and there was such a look of tenderness on his face that she must surely melt…

‘Rachel…’

‘No,’ she faltered, and pulled away. Reluctantly, he released her. He watched her, his eyes calm. Something had changed for him, too, she thought frantically. He knew.

He couldn’t know. He mustn’t.

‘Rachel, what’s wrong?’

‘I’m married,’ she said, and there was such a blunt finality about the words that the look of tenderness shuttered down on his face as if it had never been.

‘You said…you wanted out.’

‘I didn’t.’ She was hauling herself together now-somehow. She had to get off this beach. She had to get away from this man.

She had to leave.

‘I don’t want-’ he started, but she was before him.

‘Neither do I.’ She was close to tears. Here she was, lying again. She wanted Hugo so much that she was tearing apart and she could feel herself disintegrating. ‘I-it’s almost dark,’ she stammered. ‘You have to check Kim. I…I’m tired. I need my bed. Please, Hugo, can we go?’

She rose and hauled her beach towel around herself like a shield. It was stupid. Nothing could protect her from what she was feeling. Nothing.

‘Can we go?’ she whispered again. ‘Please, Hugo. I don’t need this. I can’t… I can’t.’

And there was nothing for them to do but to leave.

There was nothing for Hugo to do but to look at her with hungry eyes and a hopeless heart.

Kim was fine when he arrived back at the hospital, but Hugo took his time with the injured teenager. He hardly knew why. Kim was deeply asleep. Her exhausted parents had finally decided to cease their vigil and leave their daughter in the nurses’ care. Hugo could have simply glanced at the observation chart and left, but instead he carefully checked the wound, unwinding the bandages and surveying his handiwork with care. David, the ginger-haired nurse who was in charge tonight, watched with thoughtful appreciation.

‘You know she’s fine. I checked the leg myself a couple of hours ago. No temp, the leg’s as pink as the other one, she’s having pain but it seems to be settling-even her parents are relaxing now. Why not you, Dr McInnes?’

‘I’m relaxing,’ Hugo snapped, and David grinned.

‘Yeah, and I’m a monkey’s uncle. You’re tense as all get-out. You’re not expecting any dramas here, are you?’

Hugo looked down at Kim’s face. The fifteen-year-old was sleeping soundly, exhausted from the effects of trauma and relaxing deeply into the drugs he was using for pain-killing. She looked…fine. No, he wasn’t expecting any trauma here. Thanks to Rachel.

What was Rachel’s story?

Why did he need to know?

‘She’ll be OK,’ he managed, but David was still watching him.

‘You’re avoiding going home?’ David asked softly, and Hugo winced. Was he so transparent?

‘No.’

But David didn’t believe him. He was a fine nurse and part of that was that he read people well. ‘There’s nothing here for you to do,’ he told Hugo, his eyes still thoughtful. ‘The last of the fire crews rang in half an hour ago. Because there’s no wind up on the ridge, there’s been no dramas at all-not even a bad case of smoke in the eyes. You can go home to bed, Dr McInnes.’

‘Yeah.’

‘And you ought to.’ David was watching him with an intensity that Hugo found unnerving. ‘The forecast for tomorrow is horrible. If they don’t hold the firebreaks…’

‘The town will be safe. The river…’

‘The river will hold it this side. But the other side…’

‘You know the plan is for everyone to get over here and stay.’ Hugo shifted uneasily, thinking it through. Forcing his mind away from Rachel and onto the urgency of what lay ahead. ‘People’s homes are insured. They’ve had warning to leave. They’ll come.’

‘People do damned stupid things. Get yourself to bed, Hugo.’ David’s voice was suddenly rough with concern. ‘You know you’re going to be needed.’

‘I’ll be fine.’

Silence. Then… ‘At least you have Dr Harper.’ David’s eyes were still probing. ‘Rachel,’ he amended, and watched Hugo’s face twist. David looked even more thoughtful. Hmm, the expression on his face said. Was that the way the wind blew, then?

It wasn’t up to Hugo to enlighten him. ‘Yeah, at least I have Rachel,’ he snapped, and shoved his hands deep into his pockets and glared.

‘So go to bed and thank your stars you have her while you do,’ David told him.

‘Right.’ He was right. Of course he was right. Go to bed and be thankful…

To bed. To sleep? That was a joke!

And Rachel?

She lay awake and thought about Craig.

But she didn’t ring Dottie.