Harbour medics who also use Mrs Henderson, so I guess that’s public knowledge as well. But since my wife died four years ago …’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘It’s history,’ he said harshly. ‘But that’s the problem. The hospital, the grapevine, the whole gossip network has decided it’s time for me to move on. Even my boss keeps pushing women at me.’
‘Gee,’ she said cautiously, her interest caught through the fuzz. ‘So you’re being besieged with women. That must be tough.’
‘I’ve been married,’ he said, maybe more harshly than he intended because he paused and softened his tone. ‘What I mean is that I have no intention of going there again. I’d like everybody to lay off. You’re in Sydney for a month?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then where are you going?’
‘Brisbane?’ It was the first place that came into her mind. It sounded a lot more fun than Lighthouse Cove.
‘A month would give me head space,’ he said. ‘I’ve told them we’ve been in a relationship for a while.’
‘You did that?’ The fuzz was thickening.
‘It protects your reputation.’
‘Thank you.’ She didn’t feel like saying thank you. She felt … like she didn’t know what to say.
He was being businesslike, a surgeon outlining an action plan. ‘Apart from protecting your reputation, if we let everyone know what happened yesterday was the result of a long-term relationship, it helps me. I’m having four weeks with you and then you can go to Brisbane, you can do anything you like, but from my point of view you can be my absentee girlfriend for as long as I can carry it off. I’ll tell them you need to care for an ailing mother or something similar. I can tell them we met on holiday a couple of years ago. That you come to the farm whenever you can. That I’m a very loyal lover. I’m thinking I might get two years out of this.’
‘Two years …’
‘Two years without matchmaking. Two years where I’m left alone.’ He ran his fingers through his already rumpled hair and sighed. ‘Believe me, in this hothouse, that’s worth diamonds. And in return you get board for a month. You have to admit anything’s better than that dump you were staying in. So … deal?’
The fuzz was everywhere, but his gaze was on her. Firm. Businesslike. Like what he was suggesting was reason itself. ‘Platonic,’ he said. ‘No sex. Promise.’
‘Of course there’d be no sex, but …’ But her head was spinning. This was crazy. She’d be a pretend lover?
He was proposing an affair of convenience. No sex.
He really did have the most beautiful … pillows.
Oh, she was tired.
‘You,’ Luke said, with a certain amount of contrition, ‘are wrecked. You need to sleep. I have another bathroom off the living room. We’re independent. You sleep your bug away and then settle in for a month of businesslike contact. Would you like anything before you go to sleep?’
What was happening?
Sense was telling her to get out of this man’s bed now; get out of his life.
If she did, she’d have to leave the pillows.
And … He’d just asked her if she’d like anything. What she wanted more than anything else in the world …
‘Another cup of tea?’ she murmured, figuring it couldn’t hurt to ask.
He grinned. ‘Your wish is my command.’
And five minutes later she was tucked up in his bed with a fresh cup of tea, plumped pillows, a spare blanket, the night settling in over the apartment. Five minutes later she was Luke Williams’s Lover of Convenience.
SHE slept for almost twenty-four hours. Mrs Henderson popped in during the day with sympathy, tea, more eggs and toast soldiers, and some gentle probing.
Where had she come from? How long had she known ‘our lovely Dr Williams’? Were they engaged?
She acted shy. She acted sleepy, which wasn’t all that hard.
She slept.
The events of the last week had left her exhausted. In truth, the events of the last few years had left her exhausted.
She’d been her mother’s keeper. It had been a full-time job.
Right now, her mother didn’t know where she was and she couldn’t contact her. When Lily left town she’d stopped at the headland overlooking the bay and tossed her cellphone as far as she could throw it.
If her mother had a drama—and she would certainly have a drama—Lily wouldn’t even know about it.
She could guess.
Would the vicar stay with her? Would her mother be able to ride out the town’s condemnation? Would her mother be able to operate the microwave?
Her father had treated her mother like a Dresden doll. He’d died when Lily had been twelve, and Lily had promised …
Enough.
She lay in Luke’s bed with no cellphone, no way her mother could know where she was, and she felt … weightless.
She could even manage pretending to be Luke’s lover for this luxury, she told herself. And Luke was serious about what he wanted. He’d slept in the living room, then carefully packed everything up before he’d left for work, checking and rechecking so Mrs Henderson would have no hint they’d slept apart.
Mrs Henderson supported her into the shower, clucked over her and helped her into a clean nightgown. Apparently Luke had gone through her baggage and given instructions that everything should be cleaned. She should be offended but she didn’t have the energy. She lay in the vast bed on the crisp linen Mrs Henderson had insisted on changing. She gazed out of the windows at the glorious vista of Sydney Harbour.
Four days of nothing, nothing and nothing.
Apart from being Luke Williams’s pretend lover.
‘Wouldn’t your mother want to know that you’ve been ill?’ Mrs Henderson asked as she bustled back in to say goodbye for the night.
‘No,’ she said sleepily. ‘I don’t want to worry her.’
And her mother wasn’t worrying her. Luke Williams’s lover wouldn’t have mother worries.
Luke William’s lover didn’t.
‘So how long has this been going on? Why haven’t we heard about her before this? Where have you been
