he used on rock-faces to control his breathing. In two, out two … And then suddenly the venue was echoing with more applause and he was being nudged onto the stage.
Nerves stampeded past his eardrums, merging with the drone of the audience. Hundreds of faces beamed back at him from the stalls, all of them there for someone else’s award but perfectly willing to celebrate anyone receiving a commendation that day. The MC was still speaking—going through Sam’s service record—but he wasn’t really listening. His eyes briefly lifted as the dignitary stepped forward to shake his hand, and he did his best to look sincere through his nerves.
‘Thank you, Governor General,’ he murmured.
But then his eyes slid of their own accord to the curtain on the far side of stage. The shadow had stepped out into the half-light beyond the spotlight and stood quietly waiting. Perfectly upright. All limbs accounted for.
He sucked in a deep breath. Here we go …
‘And here today, to present Sam Gregory with his Commendation for Bravery is the woman whose life he saved on that Tasmanian mountainside—Miss Aimee Leigh.’
A spotlight swung round to where Aimee hovered in the wings, and she stepped forward nervously but with determination. Sam concentrated on breathing through his nose. She wore a long lemon skirt and a feminine white blouse, and a killer pair of strap on heels that gave her a few unnecessary inches. He realised then that he’d never seen her standing up. He’d imagined her smaller, somehow, although her height was completely perfect for the strong, brave woman he’d spent the best part of a night with.
In the worst imaginable way …
Her long hair was gone—cut short. One of the things he remembered so clearly about that night was having to slide his hand under her thick crop of sweat-damp blonde hair to check her pulse, but seeing it now, trimmed back to a chaos of wisps around a naturally made up face … It was perfect. Kind of Tinker Bell.
Very Aimee.
For no good reason he suddenly craved a shot of O2—maybe it would steady him as he stood there under such intense scrutiny from the crowd in the eternity it seemed to take for Aimee to walk across the stage towards him. She’d been dressed down for her drive into the highlands a year ago, and the only thing on her skin back then had been blood and air-bag dust, so he hadn’t expected this … vision. Perfectly groomed, carefully made-up.
Beautiful.
And, best of all, one hundred percent alive.
But those glistening rose lips weren’t smiling as she stepped closer, and she was working hard to keep her lashes down, avoiding eye-contact with him or anyone. Sam’s focus flew to the two tiny fists clenched at either side of her. Something about the defensive body-language made his own muscles bunch up. Was she here under sufferance? Or did she hate public displays as much as he did?
‘Aimee has asked to be excused from making a speech,’ the MC boomed into the mic, ‘but we’re thrilled she’s here to give this commendation to the man who saved her life last year.’
Her high heels drew to a halt in front of the lectern and her green eyes lifted to the Governor General, who handed her a medal on an embroidered ribbon. Her smile as she took it from him was weak, but it dissolved completely to nothing as she steeled herself to face him. As if she was facing a firing squad.
His gut clenched. He hadn’t expected a brass band, but he’d definitely expected a smile. Or something.
‘Aimee …?’
She lifted her eyes and they were wide with caution but otherwise carefully blank. Her tightly pressed lips split into a pained smile for the crowd’s benefit and she held trembling fingers forward to present him with the medal. Sam took it from her with his left hand and slid his right into the one she offered him—perfunctorily, as if she could almost not bear to touch his hand, let alone shake it.
What the hell …?
This was a woman whose life he’d saved. A woman he’d spent hours talking with, sharing with. Whose pain he’d stroked away. Who’d kissed him in her gratitude. And she couldn’t even bring herself to smile at him now. He frowned.
Screw that.
When she went to pull her hand away he held it longer than was necessary, drawing shocked lagoon-coloured eyes back up to his. He locked onto them, and her lips fell slightly apart at his intensity.
‘You cut your hair,’ he whispered, for her benefit only. And for something to say. Then he made himself smile through the gravity of this moment.
As if his banal observation was some kind of ice-pick in the glacier of her resistance the blank nothing leached from her eyes, and they flashed briefly with confusion before filling with a bright, glinting relief he virtually basked in. Her tense façade cracked and fell away, leaving only the Aimee he remembered from the A10, and before he knew it she was stretched to her toe-tips and throwing her arms around his already tight shirt collar. Completely on instinct his hands slid around her waist and he held her close, returning her embrace.
The crowd leapt to his feet to cheer.
‘I missed you,’ she whispered into his ear, as though she’d been waiting a year to tell him that. The warmth of her breath against his skin made it pucker. ‘It’s so good to see you.’
As he held onto a woman who wasn’t his wife in front of two hundred people who weren’t his friends, Sam realised what those dreams and memories he’d been suppressing had tried to tell him.
He’d missed her, too.
Even though he’d only known her a few hours he’d missed Aimee for a year, and kept her close in his sub-conscious. Never quite on the surface—just out of it. As she’d stood in the shadows of the spotlight just now.
Waiting.
His arms tightened further, swinging her just slightly off her feet and forcing her curves more firmly up against him. His commendation dangled forgotten from his fingers.
After all, this was all the reward he needed.
Aimee’s heart had still not settled twenty minutes later as the two of them stood talking in a quiet corner backstage. She’d dreaded this for so long—but one look from those baffled, wounded blue eyes had totally washed away her resolve, rewound the past eleven-months-nine-days-and-sixteen-hours and thrown them straight back into the place where two complete strangers could feel so instantly connected.
So … It hadn’t gone away.
Had she really believed it would?
‘You must have people waiting for you?’ Aimee hinted at last, giving him a graceful exit point if he wanted one. Just in case she was wrong about the connection.
He shook his head and let the exit slide. ‘Nope. I came up to Canberra alone.’
She only noticed she’d suspended her breath when her chest forced her to exhale. ‘Your … family didn’t come with you?’ God, she was such a coward. But she didn’t want to ask. She wanted him to volunteer it openly. Honestly.
To prove he wasn’t like her father.
