explanation had been so surprising Annabelle had no idea how to react. It was okay as far as it went—it did make sense for him to experience the placement—but trying to picture this man in a bush setting—for two months—impossible!
And there’d also been a pause in his explanation, as if he was holding back a little of it, though what it could be, and why he couldn’t say it, she had no idea.
Fortunately, the attendant appeared, pushing a heavy trolley, offering breakfast trays to the passengers.
‘They call this breakfast?’ Nick—she was going to call him Nick—queried minutes later, eyeing with distaste the rather squashed croissant, pat of butter and tiny container of jam on his tray.
‘There’s juice as well,’ Annabelle pointed out, reaching over to lift his sealed container of juice out of the coffee cup. ‘And fruit.’ She pointed to the square plastic container nestled in another corner of the tray.
‘In fact,’ she added, ‘you can have my fruit and my juice. The croissant and coffee is enough for me.’
Nick barely considered her offer, suddenly struck by the truth of what she’d said earlier about the togetherness they’d share over the next two months. It was as if it had already started, with Annabelle offering him bits of her breakfast as naturally as a lover—or wife—might offer leftovers. Not that the act of offering bothered him—he’d eat her fruit—but the false intimacy of the offer made him feel extremely uncomfortable. Have mine—as though they were friends…
He ate his fruit and hers, drank both juices and had just asked for coffee rather than tea when the intimacy thing happened again. Not right away, but almost naturally…
‘Two months still seems like overkill,’ she said. ‘If it’s not the money, are you hiding out for some reason?’ She must have realised how rude the question was for she lifted one dainty, slim-fingered hand and clapped it over her mouth. ‘Don’t answer that!’ she added quickly. ‘In fact, forget I asked. I’m not usually rude or inquisitive, it just seems strange…’
‘Strange?’ Nick echoed, wondering just what her impression of him was. His of her was fairly vague, good nurse who was always caught up in the worst situations in the A and E. ‘Why strange?’
She turned towards him, a flake of croissant pastry clinging to her lower lip. Without conscious thought Nick reached out and wiped it away, then saw a blush rise beneath her skin as she scrubbed a paper napkin across her mouth in case any other scraps were lingering there.
It wasn’t really intimacy, Nick told himself while Annabelle stumbled on in a kind of muddled explanatory kind of apology.
‘Well, the impression of Nick St—Tempest…The impression the gossips pass on fast enough is of someone who has it made. Private schooling, smart car, great clothes, once married to one of the country’s top models, always with a beautiful woman on your arm at hospital functions, easily mixing with the rich and famous, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. I suppose that’s why I was shocked to see you on the plane.’
Nick flinched at her summing up of him—did he really appear so shallow to his colleagues? Did no one suspect it was all a front—that the beautiful women were nothing more than armour? That since Nellie there was no way he’d ever open himself up to such hurt again? That work was his sole focus? His life?
Why would they?
He hid the flinch behind a half-smile and pushed her a little further.
‘Never for a moment thinking it might have been pure altruism on my part? Doing my bit for the country?’ he asked, and Annabelle laughed.
‘Not for a nanosecond!’ she agreed, smiling so broadly he was momentarily thrown off track. Though that hitch in his chest couldn’t have had anything to do with this woman’s smile!
‘And,’ she continued, ‘you’ve already admitted it was a work-related decision, but doing it for two months still seems a bit excessive.’
He shrugged off the comment, unwilling to admit he was already regretting the impulse that had put him on this plane, especially since Annabelle had used the words hiding out. Now he considered this aspect of it, although he believed he was a man who could handle any situation, he had to admit there was an element of that in the decision, and a feeling of not exactly shame but something like it washed through him.
The hospital ball was coming up and he was tired of finding someone to take to official functions—tired of explaining to the beautiful women that he wanted nothing more than a companion for the evening. But he knew from experience that not attending prompted more talk and speculation than him taking a different woman every time.
Added to which, Nellie was due in Brisbane for the annual fashion week later in the month and her face would be plastered on billboards and smiling out of newspapers and television screens, and try as he may to control it—control again—his stomach still clenched at the sight of that dazzling smile.
At the cold-blooded treachery it hid.
At the thought of what she’d done.
Control!
Fortunately the attendant was now pouring the coffee, so conversation could be forgotten.
He drank his coffee, looking out the window as he sipped, watching the broad ribbon of land unwind beneath him. Thinking of the past—not only of Nellie but of other losses—knowing it was time to put it all behind him and move forward. The challenge of the new job was just what he needed. He’d be too busy getting on top of that for the past to keep intruding. Control!
But even as his mind wandered, his eyes still registered the scenery.
Every now and then the red turned green and he guessed at crops he didn’t know the names of because he had no real idea what grew where, out here in what all Aussies, he included, called ‘the bush'.
‘See the huge dams?’ Annabelle was leaning towards him, peering past him out the window, unaware her soft breast was pressing against his chest. ‘They’re for the cotton crops. They take more water out of our river systems than any other crop and it’s causing problems for people further down the rivers and also slowly poisoning the whole river system.’
‘You a greenie as well as a geography whiz?’ he asked, finding, as she pressed a little closer, that her short, shiny hair diverted him from thoughts of soft breasts, smelling of lemons, not rotten eggs.
‘Nope, but I think it’s stupid to grow crops that need water in places that don’t have all that much.’
‘Like it’s stupid for a man who doesn’t need the bonus money to take this placement?’
She sat back and frowned at him.
‘I didn’t say that, and I sure as heck wouldn’t criticise you coming out here for whatever reason you came. In fact, I’m really impressed to think you’d do it—to see it for yourself before sending people out. I was just surprised, that’s all.’
But when she gave a little huff of laughter, Nick doubted she’d told the truth.
Until she explained…
‘I was surprised to
