MELANIE MILBURNE - The Man with the Locked Away Heart

‘Better to have five years with the right one than twenty-five with the wrong one,’ she said.

Marc felt a hammer blow of guilt hit him in the chest. Simon and Julie had been married five years. He had been their best man. He remembered the day so clearly. He had forgotten the rings and had had to get a colleague to bring them to the church in a squad car. Everyone had laughed, thinking it had been a set-up. So many memories. So many images of happy times he had shared with them both. Marc still remembered the day Simon told him he was going to be a father. He had been so proud and excited about building a family with Julie. There had been photos of Sam and Julie plastered all over Simon’s desk at the station. Their anniversary had been the week before Simon had been killed. Marc had taken all of that away from them: their future; their hopes and dreams; their happiness.

The silence was measured by the sound of the large wall clock ticking near the pantry.

‘What about you, Sergeant?’ Gemma asked. ‘Do you want to settle down one day?’

His eyes met hers but this time it looked like a light had gone off inside, leaving them like an empty, dark room. ‘I am Australian born but, as you have probably guessed, I have a strong Italian background. Family is supposed to be important to us Italians, but I must be an aberration as I don’t see myself settling down.’

Gemma pursed her lips. ‘So you’re a bit of a playboy, then, are you?’

He gave her that sexy not-quite-a-smile again, the glinting light back on in his eyes. ‘I always make an effort to leave no casualties in the love stakes.’

‘Have you ever been in love?’ Oh, God, why did I just ask that? Gemma thought with a cringe of embarrassment. She took a quick sip of wine so she could bury her head in the glass.

‘No, not unless you count the time I fell for my kindergarten teacher, Miss Moffat,’ he said. ‘I didn’t miss a single day of my first year at school. My mother was very disappointed it didn’t last. I had to be bribed to go most days, right up until I left high school.’

‘School is often an issue for boys,’ Gemma said. ‘A lot of the boys out here drop out. It’s sad to see the waste of potential.’

‘What sort of social problems do you have out here?’ Marc asked.

Gemma toyed with the last of her food, pushing it around with her fork as she thought of the heartbreaking situations she had handled in the short time she had been in town. ‘The usual stuff,’ she said, ‘drinking and violence and vandalism. It’s a real problem with the indigenous youth. They’re caught between two worlds. They don’t really fit in either one at times. Some make it, like Ray Grant, for instance, but others don’t. But it’s much the same for the whites. The youth around here are bored as there is simply nothing for them to do if they don’t work on the land. I try not to be overwhelmed by it but sometimes it’s hard not to get involved. Clinical distance works a lot better in the city when you don’t see past the name on the patient information sheet. Out here you know the patient personally and their parents, and the brothers and sisters. They’re not just patients. Most of them become your friends.’

‘You sound like you really care about your patients.’

‘I do,’ she said. ‘Being a doctor in a small community is a huge responsibility. People depend on you in so many ways. But that’s what I like about the job. You get to make a difference now and again. It’s very rewarding when that happens.’

Gemma realised she had poured her heart out much more than she would normally do to a person she had only met just hours ago. It made her feel a little uncomfortable. He had much more information on her than she had on him. ‘What do you love most about being a cop?’ she asked.

‘The long hours, the crappy pay, the criminals and the cold coffee,’ he said.

She gave him a droll look. ‘Very-funny.’

His mouth tilted slightly. ‘Did I mention the endless paperwork?’

‘You didn’t need to,’ she said. ‘It’s the same in my profession.’

He put his knife and fork together on the plate in the correct I-am-finished position. ‘Serving the public in law enforcement is always a challenge,’ he said, his gaze momentarily focused on the wine in his glass. The light went off again. A shadow drifted over his expression, like a cloud over the face of the moon, but then he blinked and the shadow disappeared as he picked up his glass to add, ‘You can’t fix everything that needs to be fixed. You can’t solve every case that needs to be solved.’

Gemma fiddled with the stem of her wineglass. ‘So why Jingilly Creek?’ she asked. ‘Why not some resort town on the coast or somewhere more densely populated?’

His chocolate-brown eyes met hers, but apart from a tiny tensing movement in his jaw his expression remained unreadable. ‘I felt like I needed a complete change,’ he said. ‘It seemed as good a place as any.’

‘Did you throw a dart at a map?’ she asked.

That brought a flicker of a smile to his mouth, softening his features for a moment. ‘Just about.’

Gemma wondered if there was much more to his move out here than he was letting on. He had an air of mystery about him; an aloofness she suspected went much further than him simply being a cop. ‘So you’ll be the one in charge now at the station?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Constable Grant can now resume his regular duties.’

Gemma wondered how the new broom was going to fit in the broom cupboard down at the small station. In remote areas more junior officers often had to take on more senior positions due to the chronic shortage of staff. There would most certainly be an adjustment period. Jack Chugg had been strict but fair with the locals before he’d retired. Ray Grant had a much more laid-back approach, especially when dealing with other local indigenous people with whom he had blood ties. It would be interesting to see if Marc Di Angelo adopted the same live-and-let-live approach that Ray did. ‘You might have to feel your way a bit,’ she said. ‘Ray’s been used to handling things his way.’

‘I’m here to do a job,’ Marc said. ‘Not win a popularity contest.’

Gemma studied his expression for a moment. ‘It would be nice to do both, though, don’t you think?’

He gave her a cynical look as he leaned back in his chair. ‘Maybe I should take some lessons from you, Dr Kendall, on how to charm the locals,’ he said. ‘Who knows what bonuses might be out here for me to collect?’

Gemma set her mouth and began to rise to gather up their plates. Marc’s hand came down over her wrist and held it to the table. The smile fell away from her mouth, her heart picking up its pace until she could hear it instead of the ticking clock. She felt the slow burn of his touch in his long strong fingers, so dark and masculine against the soft creamy texture of her skin.

‘No,’ he said. ‘Let me clear away. You cooked. It’s only fair that I get to do the dishes.’

She slipped her hand out from under his, her face so hot she felt like she had stuck it in the oven on full fan-forced heat. ‘Th-thanks,’ she said. ‘I’ll make some coffee. I don’t have any dessert. I mean, nothing I’ve made especially. I have fruit and yogurt, if you’d like?’

‘Coffee is fine,’ he said.

Gemma let out the breath she was holding as she opened the fridge to get out the ground coffee. The kitchen suddenly seemed far too small with Marc Di Angelo standing at the sink with his wrists submerged in hot, soapy water.

The domestic scene made her feel as if she had stepped over a boundary way too soon. It was intimate and yet he was a perfect stranger. She was sharing this big old house with a man she didn’t know and yet for some reason she didn’t feel frightened, or at least not in a physically threatened sense. She did feel on edge but that had more to do with her reaction to him: his touch, for instance. What was that all about? Why had her heart started to race like a greyhound when his fingers had pressed down over her wrist? His dark brown gaze had locked her just as firmly in place, those bottomless eyes that saw so much and gave away so little.