‘I don’t think this is a bad thing. I’m happy with my reshaped life,’ she told him, ignoring all the turmoil going on inside her. ‘Very happy!’
That should stop him asking any more personal questions, she told herself as she picked up her fork and stirred the remaining strips of pale, translucent seafood.
Cam clamped his teeth together so the questions he wanted to ask wouldn’t escape. What had her dream been? What had happened for her to change direction—to reshape her life? Her sister’s death? More than that?
It was none of his business.
He was moving on.
Okay, so now he’d suggested the men’s programme, he could set it up, but someone else could run it.
He looked out at the ocean, black and mysterious, always moving, changing, reshaping itself and the land it slid onto or crashed against, and all at once he knew he didn’t want to move on—didn’t want to leave this place—and not entirely because of the good surf.
Or the fact that getting a programme set up and running would be a terrific challenge.
She’d argued, as he guessed she would, over the bill, but he’d insisted on paying, so she’d walked out of the restaurant in front of him, slowing on the steps, allowing him to catch up as she reached the ground.
‘Is there a good track up onto the headland?’ he asked, thinking a walk would be a pleasant way to end the day.
Actually, thinking he’d like to spend more time in this woman’s company, and what better than a walk in the moonlight?
‘Yes,’ she said, and something in the way she said it—hard, abrupt—stopped him making the suggestion. But before he could decide whether he wanted to argue, she sighed and turned towards the dark shape of the headland.
‘Come on, let’s do it,’ she said. ‘I’ve put it off long enough.’
Cam had no idea what she meant, but he was delighted she would walk with him no matter what her reasoning.
She set a brisk pace, but his strides were so much longer than hers, it made it easy for him to keep up. Low scrubby bushes, wind-bent, leaned across the path, the smell of salt and the moonlight, wrapping them in a secret world. The shushing of the surf onto the beach, occasional cries of night-hunting birds and the ever-present crashing of the waves against the rocks reminded Cam of all the reasons it was good to be alive.
Good to be alive with a pretty woman by his side?
‘The problem with loving people is … ‘ the pretty woman announced, in a voice that told him her mood might not have been as upbeat as his. They’d paused about halfway up the track at a fenced lookout that gave a fantastic view along the southern beach and were leaning on the railing.
‘The problem,’ she repeated, ‘is that you have to give yourself in love—bits of yourself—diminishing you and making you vulnerable so that when something happens to the person you love, it leaves a hole in your soul. You have to regrow those bits to make yourself whole again, but I don’t know whether you can ever refill that hole in your soul.’
He understood she wasn’t really talking to him, more giving voice to her thoughts so she could sort them out. Now she’d been silent so long, leaning on the railing, dark against the light of the ocean’s reflected moonlight, he wondered if he should prompt her, or maybe simply walk on and let her catch up.
No, he couldn’t do that.
He waited, looking at the beach but always with her silhouette at one side of his view, so he saw the moment when she shrugged off whatever melancholy had gripped her and turned towards him, a sad half-smile lingering on her face.
‘I’m sorry—I didn’t know that stuff was waiting to come out. Talk about needing a counsellor!’
She shrugged again.
‘My sister, my twin, was injured off this headland. It had been our playground all our lives, then suddenly I found I couldn’t come here. Even now, I don’t want to go on up to the top. I thought I could, after all this time, but I can’t. She didn’t die at once, brain-injured, though, a paraplegic for the ten years that she lived after the accident.’
‘Oh, Jo!’
Her name slipped from his lips as his arms folded her against him—a comforting embrace for a woman who was obviously still lost in her grief. He knew from the talk of the patients he’d seen that she would do anything for anyone, had seen her care and concern for Jackie, but who supported Jo? The patients’ questioning of him, and their not-so-subtle innuendoes had told him she didn’t have a man in her life.
Had she cut herself off from others because love had hurt so much?
Was her passion for the refuge a substitute for love?
He tightened his hold on her, aware that she was relaxing against him now, although when first he’d held her, her body had been stiff and awkward.
‘You do know a load is easier to carry when there’s someone to help you with it, don’t you?’ he murmured against her tangle of hair.
She stirred then looked up at him, her face lit by the bright moon, the slightest of smiles playing around her pink lips.
‘And just how much of your load are you sharing?’ she asked. ‘The load you’re trying to drown in the surf?’
Had he mentioned his baggage?
Surely not.
So she’d divined it somehow—guessed he’d carry some unresolved mental trauma from his army experience?
Or she was a witch!
He’d never kissed a witch.
The thought startled him so much he dropped his arms, and the moonlit face he’d almost kissed disappeared from view.
Jo eased herself out of his arms, bewildered by her reluctance to move. Surely she hadn’t mistaken a comforting hug for something more personal?
Although a glint, or maybe a gleam-in his eyes—just then at the end—had made her think he might—
No way! As if he’d been about to kiss her …
He must be feeling so uncomfortable, poor man, and wondering if his boss was some kind of lunatic.
Luna—moon—was it moon-madness that she’d blurted out her pain to him?
Made him feel obliged to give her a hug?
The problem was her memories of Jill had come slinking and creeping back into her mind from the moment she’d seen Cam in the flat—the stranger in amongst the roses. Then the talk of surfing and reshaped dreams at dinner, and to top it all off, Cam’s suggestion they walk up the headland.
Jo’s first instinct had been to say no, but she’d known she had to do it one day. She loved the headland and for one crazy moment she’d thought it might complete her rebuilding—make her whole
