must have seen the expression on his face. She quickly dropped her gaze. ‘I keep forgetting. You’re a tough soldier. You can sleep on a pile of rocks.’
With Jacko in her arms, she hurried away, the white nightdress whispering around her smooth, shapely calves.
Joe knew he wouldn’t be sleeping.
* * *
Jacko settled quickly. He was like a little teddy bear as he snuggled close to Ellie and in no time he was asleep again. She adored her little miracle boy, and she relished this excuse to lie still and hold him, loving the way he nestled close.
Lying in the darkness, she inhaled the scent of his clean hair and listened to the soft rhythm of his breathing.
His perfection constantly amazed her.
But, tonight, it wasn’t long before she was thinking about Joe and, in a matter of moments, she felt a pain in her chest like indigestion, and then her throat was tense and aching, choked.
She kept seeing Joe’s signature on that piece of paper.
And now he was about to head off for the Southern Ocean. Surely, if he wanted adventure, he could have caught wild bulls or rogue crocodiles, or found half a dozen other dangerous activities that were closer to home?
Instead, once again, he was getting as far away from her as possible, risking his life in stormy seas and chasing international poachers, for pity’s sake.
Unhelpfully, Ellie recalled how eye-wateringly amazing Joe had looked just now, standing bare-chested in Jacko’s room. With the little boy in his arms, he’d looked so incredibly strong and muscular and protective.
Man, he was buffed.
He’d always been fit and athletic, of course, which was one of the reasons the Army had snapped him up, but now, after all the extra training and discipline, her ex-husband looked sensational.
Her ex.
The word hit her like a slug to the heart. Which was crazy. I don’t want him back. Looks aren’t everything. They’re just a distraction.
Tonight, it was all too easy to forget the pain she and Joe had been through, the constant bickering and soul-destroying negativity, the tears and the yelling. The sad truth was—the final year before their separation had been pretty close to hell on earth.
Unhappily, Ellie knew that a large chunk of the tension had been her fault. During that bleak time when she’d been so overwhelmed by her inability to get pregnant again, she’d really turned on Joe until everything he’d done had annoyed her.
Looking back, she felt so guilty. She’d been a shrew—constantly picking on Joe for the smallest things, even the way he left clothes lying around, or the way he left the lid off the toothpaste, the way he’d assumed she was happy to look after the house and the garden while he swanned off, riding his horse all over their property, enjoying all the adventurous, more important outdoor jobs, while she was left to cook and clean.
Ellie hadn’t been proud of her nagging and fault-finding. As a child, she’d hated the way her mother picked on her dad all the time, and she’d been shocked to find herself repeating that despicable pattern. But she’d become so tense and depressed she hadn’t been able to stop herself.
Naturally, Joe hadn’t accepted her insults meekly. He’d slung back as good as he got. But she’d been devastated when he finally suggested divorce.
‘It’s clear that I’m making you unhappy,’ he’d said in a cold, clipped voice she’d never heard before.
And how could Ellie deny it? She had been unhappy, and she’d taken her unhappiness out on Joe, but that hadn’t meant she wanted to be rid of him.
‘Do you really want a divorce?’ she’d asked him and, although she’d been crying on the inside, for the sake of her pride, she’d kept a brave face.
‘I think it’s the only solution,’ Joe had said. ‘We can’t go on like this. Maybe you’ll have better luck with another guy.’
She didn’t want another man, but why would Joe believe that when she’d been so obviously miserable?
‘What would you do?’ she’d asked instead. ‘Where would you go? What would we do about Karinya?’
He’d been scarily cool and detached. ‘You can make up your mind about Karinya, but I’ll apply to join the Army.’
She hadn’t known how to fight this. ‘The Army was what you wanted all along, wasn’t it? It was what you were planning before we met.’
Joe didn’t deny this.
It was then she’d known the awful truth. Falling for her had been an aberration. A distraction.
If she hadn’t been pregnant, they wouldn’t have married...
The bitter memories wrung a groan from Ellie and, beside her in the darkness, Jacko stirred, throwing out an arm and smacking her on the nose. He didn’t wake up and she rolled away, staring moodily into the black night, thinking about Joe lying in his swag on the study floor. He’d insisted on sleeping there rather than in Nina’s room.
‘It’s only for one night,’ he’d said. ‘Not worth disturbing her things.’
Ellie wondered if Joe was asleep, or whether he was also lying there thinking about their past.
Unlikely.
No doubt he was relieved to be finally and permanently free of her. He certainly wouldn’t be as mixed-up and tied in knots as she was.
* * *
Joe didn’t want to think about Ellie. She was part of his past, just as the Army was now. Every time visions of her white nightdress arrived, he forcibly erased them.
He’d signed the final papers.
Ellie. Was. No. Longer. His. Wife.
And yet...
Annoyingly, he felt a weight that felt like grief pressing on his chest. Grief for their loss, and for their failure, for their past mistakes and for how things used to be at the beginning.
And, despite his best efforts, he couldn’t stop the blasted memories.
He’d been a goner from the moment he first saw Ellie, which was pretty bizarre, given that his first sighting had been at long distance.
Ellie had been walking with her back to him at the far end of their tiny town’s one and only shopping street. And, from the start, there’d been something inescapably alluring about her. The glossy swing of her dark hair and the jaunty sway of her neat butt in long-legged blue jeans had completely captured his attention.
Of course, it was totally the worst time for Joe to become romantically entangled. He’d been on the brink of joining the Army. After struggling unsuccessfully to find his place in the large Madden family, overrun with strapping sons, he’d been lured by the military’s promise of adventure and danger.
So,
