Marion Lennox - Bushfire Bride

‘What on earth…?’

She looked over to the doorway. Hugo was watching them. Stunned. ‘What on earth do you think you’re doing?’

She refused to give up the moment. Not yet. She’d had a very big day and so had Toby. A vision of Toby’s face as he’d watched them work on Kim came back to her. It was too much horror for a six-year-old to be put to bed with. He needed to sleep with bouncing.

‘We’re bouncing, Dr McInnes,’ she told him, then gripped Toby’s hands tighter and bounced again. ‘Care to join us?’

‘You’ll break the bedsprings.’

‘I’ll pay for them,’ she said nobly. ‘I’m donating one set of bedsprings to the common good. I need a bounce and so does Toby. I’m sure you do, too.’

‘I wouldn’t fit,’ he said faintly, and she grinned.

‘That’s what you get for showing your guest to a room with a single bed.’

‘Daddy’s got a bigger bed,’ Toby volunteered, mid-bounce. ‘Can we can go there?’

Digger barked again as if he thought that was a truly excellent idea.

‘My bed’s for sleeping in,’ Hugo told them, and Rachel grimaced.

‘How boring.’

‘The kettle’s boiled. Do you want a drink?’

Rachel considered. She bounced a couple of times and looked down at Toby. He bounced with her and met her look-co-conspirators. Co-bouncers. ‘Do we want a drink, Toby?’

‘I’d like some hot chocolate,’ he told her, and bounced again.

‘That sounds good.’ Another bounce. ‘Maybe we could stop and bounce again tomorrow night.’

‘Are you staying for two nights?’

She cast a sideways glance at Hugo and bounced a bit more. ‘I may,’ she told him. ‘If I’m not kicked out because of my bouncing habits. I think I’m needed.’

‘Because of the fire?’ Toby asked, and she nodded.

‘Because of the fire. And because…maybe because you guys could do with a bit of bouncing. Like me.’

What was happening here?

Hugo prepared three mugs of hot chocolate and listened to their laughter. He’d backed out of the room fast.

Why?

He didn’t know. Confusion, he thought. He was definitely confused. The sight of one crazy doctor, gorgeous in her borrowed Crimplene, holding his little son and bouncing as if she were six years old, too…

Confusion summed it up, he thought. She was like no one he’d ever met.

She was…gorgeous?

She was also married. She was wearing a band of gold very definitely on the third finger of her left hand. She was attached to a creep called Michael.

How attached?

Married attached.

But, then…he wore a wedding band as well.

Why?

Habit, he guessed. Beth had been dead for almost six years now.

So why did he keep wearing the ring?

The vision of Christine came into his head. Beth’s older sister. Christine, who came in every day and cared for Toby, fussed over this house, made sure Toby had a memory of his mother.

Christine would marry him. He knew that. She was just waiting for him to move on from her sister.

So he wore a wedding ring.

‘It’s time you got over it,’ Christine had told him, but he wasn’t ready. He hadn’t been ready to marry Beth. He hadn’t wanted to marry anyone.

The memory of his parents’ loveless marriage was always there-his mother, cool and calculating, with eyes only for things of monetary value, and his father who’d had eyes only for women he could bed. He himself had been raised to be self-contained, aloof and indifferent, and only Toby had ever been able to get under his skin.

The thought of Rachel came back into his vision. Bouncing. Christine would never bounce. Not in a fit.

Neither would Beth, his ex-wife, have bounced. Neither would his mother.

Rachel was…different.

But Rachel had a husband. He thought back to the silver-haired cardiologist he’d met so briefly. The man might be odious, but he was obviously an extremely wealthy and well-connected doctor, and they were married. So Rachel might be bouncing in his spare bedroom with his small son but she had a husband and an Afghan hound and a life back in the city.

So stop thinking of her like…what?

Like his father thought of women?

No. It wasn’t like that. This was something he had never felt before-in truth, he’d never known he could feel this way. Ever. But he was certainly feeling, and the problem was-he couldn’t stop to save himself.

The hot chocolate was excellent. Exhausted, glowing with exertion from their bouncing, Rachel and Toby enjoyed it equally. Hugo watched them as he’d watch two kids with their play lunch, and Rachel looked up and caught his eye and said, ‘What?’

‘What do you mean-what?’

‘What are you grinning at?’

‘I was just thinking you and Toby look of an age.’

‘Toby is very mature for six.’ She set her mug down on the table and rose to her feet, which all of a sudden didn’t feel too steady. It had been a roller-coaster of a day and she was rolling downward to sleep. ‘And I’m sure it’s Toby’s and my bedtime. Toby had an afternoon nap. I didn’t even have a nap last night.’

‘Why not?’

‘It’d take far too long to explain,’ she said with dignity. She eyed him with indecision. ‘I suppose you wouldn’t happen to have a spare toothbrush, would you? My gear’s still at the showgrounds.’

‘Not only a toothbrush.’ He grinned. ‘While you and Toby were bouncing I made you up a sleeping kit. One pair of pyjamas, slightly large, one brand-new toothbrush and a comb. Everything else you need you’ll find in the guest bathroom.’

She swallowed. Heck. It was a small enough gesture, but it was enough. The man was thoughtful.

The man smiled!

The man was seriously gorgeous.

‘Goodnight, then,’ she said, and there was a distinct tremor in her voice.

His smile died and their eyes met. Something passed between them that was indefinable but it was still…there.

But there was nothing to say. To try and bring it into the open-this thing…

Impossible.

‘Goodnight,’ he said, and she knew he was thinking no such thing. He was thinking exactly what she was thinking.

Impossible!

What was it with her?

Hugo stood and watched while Rachel walked away from him down the corridor to her bedroom. Her door closed behind her but he stood and watched for a very long time.

What was it?

‘Dottie?’

‘My dear, why are you ringing at this time of night?’

‘I’m checking.’ Rachel was tucked into her opulent bed, her cellphone resting on her pillow. ‘I just need… Dottie, I need to know…’

‘You know he’s just the same. He always will be just the same, whether you’re here or not. Now, are you somewhere nice with that nice young man?’

‘I…’ Rachel bit her lip. That nice young man.

Maybe she could apply the adjective to Toby.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, I am.’

‘Has he taken you somewhere gorgeous?’

She smiled at that. This, at least, was an easy question. ‘It’s all red and gold brocade,’ she whispered. ‘And incredibly luxurious. Dottie, you should see the bed.’

There was a moment’s silence. And then Dottie spoke again, deeply satisfied.

‘Then why are you wasting time on the phone talking about it?’ she demanded. ‘You put your phone down this minute and go and make the most of it.’

Make the most of it? That was a joke.

Rachel put the phone down and pulled up her covers but in the end she did make the most of it. Or she did what she most needed to do.

She slept.

Digger was barking.

Rachel surfaced to sunlight streaming in over her bed. She blinked, trying to figure out just where she was. Memory came flooding back. She stretched out in her too-big pyjamas and thought this wasn’t such a bad place to live if you took away the brocade. And the tassels. And the particularly ghastly cupids staring dotingly down from the mantelpiece.