run back to Nick that was causing her to linger on the corner. Right?
If Nick was watching them, she’d go back and have a coffee. If not, she’d keep going.
Turning around, she saw him talking to the policeman, obviously giving his version of events. He was concentrating on the conversation, his face in profile. He wasn’t looking in her direction. No doubt she was already far from his mind and she wouldn’t be given so much as another brief thought.
Rosie turned the corner, her disappointment acute.
Had she let a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity slide through her grasp? Or was it really only a wake-up call to sort her new life out better?
She sighed and ruffled Lucy’s damp hair. He’d asked her for a coffee, nothing more than that.
None of it mattered anyway. She’d done the right thing by the children. She hadn’t followed the heady pull towards Nick. Sure, maybe that had only been by default but she’d stayed true to her commitment. Her focus was the twins. Her priority was solely their welfare and she wouldn’t be distracted.
A cup of coffee with Nick would have provided her with far too many distractions. Distractions she at least had enough common sense left to know she was in no way equipped to deal with.
Nick glanced up from his conversation with the policeman just as Rosie turned the corner. Good-looking women were a dime a dozen in Bondi but there was something about this one…What was it? Her general appearance wasn’t dissimilar to hundreds of other women who frequented Sydney beaches, slim, tall and blonde. It was something else telling him she was different.
She seemed a little misplaced in Bondi, was that it? Even the backpackers blended into the crowd but Rosie seemed almost to stand apart from everyone else.
And what about the little girl with her? Rosie had no rings on her fingers and the girl had called her by her name, not Mum. She was a trained doctor so he guessed she wasn’t the au pair. Maybe Rosie was the partner of the girl’s dad? It seemed the most likely scenario. Pity, he would have liked to have had a coffee with her and he’d been hoping when he looked up she might have changed her mind and been heading back to him.
‘One last thing—’
The policeman had stopped scribbling in his pad and Nick had to turn his attention back to him.
Maybe he and Rosie would bump into each other again if she lived around here.
Then again, he told himself as he finished with the policeman and headed down to the beach for his swim, any involvement with a woman was the last thing on his to-do list right now. She was the first woman he’d met in a long time to really pique his interest and he wasn’t sure a coffee would sufficiently cool that interest.
There were places and times for everything in life. He didn’t doubt there would come a time and a place for a woman in his life again one day.
But right now wasn’t the time. Or the place.
Then how to explain this lingering feeling that a chance encounter on the beach might have shown him the woman?
Madness. He’d taken temporary leave of his senses due to…work stress? That was it. Work stress, life stress. So naturally his body wanted some female distraction, right at the very time he least needed it, when he was so close to finally realising his goals.
He waded into the waves, the cool of the sea hitting his shins before he dived in, striking out for his ritual Sunday swim. The water, slick on his skin, was as stimulating as it always was.
Pushing himself to go harder, faster, he willed the water to wash away the image of a certain woman from his mind.
Any form of temptation was madness. And that’s all this was. Nothing more.
CHAPTER TWO
LUCY raced inside, eager to tell her brother all the morning’s news, while Rosie headed for the kitchen, where her mother was doing the last of the breakfast dishes.
‘What happened? Are you all right?’
Rosie followed her mother’s gaze, looking down at her sundress that had started the day clean and white but was now covered in blood and dirt.
‘I’m fine. It’s not my blood. There was an accident, a pedestrian was hit, a boy from Lucy’s school.’ Rosie pulled out a kitchen stool and collapsed onto it. She should probably take over the dishes from her mum but she didn’t have the energy.
‘Is he okay?’
‘Some broken bones but he’ll be fine. It was a bit crazy.’
‘I’ll put the kettle on, you look like you could use a cup of tea.’
The old ritual of a cup of tea as a cure-all. Funnily enough, it did always seem to help. Maybe because it made you stop and catch your breath? Then again, in the two months since her brother and sister-in-law had died, she’d had so many cups of tea she sometimes felt she was one big tea bag herself.
Half-heartedly, she started sorting through the stack of mail, including her own redirected post, that had been dumped in a teetering pile on the kitchen bench. One more task that seemed to be getting away from her, one more task she started on routinely but never completed. Was that a key part of the definition of parenthood? She was starting to wonder.
Her mum slid a cup of tea over the counter. ‘Ally phoned while you were out, she said something about going out tonight. Do you need me to watch the children?’
‘Thanks, but no. I wasn’t planning on going.’
‘Are you sure? It’d do you good.’
‘What do you mean?’ Rosie put aside the mail.
‘How many times have you been out since you moved back to Sydney? Twice? For coffee with Ally, nothing more at my count.’
She shrugged. ‘I’m often out.’
Her mum pushed a strand of hair out of her face and shook her head. ‘Going to the supermarket and dropping the twins at school doesn’t count. You need to see your friends and it’s not good for you or the children if you spend all your time with them.’
‘I want them to know I’m here for them, that they’re not alone.’
‘They know that, sweetheart.’
‘Do they? I know they worry when I go out in the car without them. The last time they saw their parents was as they were driving off for their weekend away. They haven’t expressed that, but it’s what they’re thinking about, it’s in their eyes,’ Rosie explained.
‘I understand what you’re saying but you can’t let that make you a hermit,’ her mother pointed out.
‘The twins need time, especially Charlie. So far we’ve somehow managed to stop his mutism worsening because at least he’s still talking to our immediate family, but if he starts to doubt he’s safe with me, what then? And I need time, too. For one thing, I’m not sure how, or if, my old life and my new life can coexist. I’m just trying
