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But for now...that ache... The way Rob talked to her... That he asked her to his bed...
It was like a siren call, she thought helplessly. She’d loved this man; she’d loved everything about him. Love had almost destroyed her and she couldn’t go there again, but for tonight... Tonight was an anomaly—time out of frame.
For tonight, she was in her home with her husband. He wasn’t pushing. He never had. He was simply waiting for her to make her decision.
Lie with her husband...or not?
Have one night as the Julie of old...or not?
‘Because once we loved,’ he said lightly, as if this wasn’t a major leap, and maybe it wasn’t. Maybe she could love again—just for the night. One night of Rob and then she’d get on with her life. One night...
‘But not if you see it as scary.’
His gaze was locked on hers. ‘It’s for pleasure only, my Jules,’ he said softly. ‘No threats. No promises. No future. Just for this night. Just for us. Just for now. Maybe or yes? I need a yes, Jules. You have to be sure.’
And suddenly she was. ‘Yes,’ she said, because there was nothing else to say. ‘Yes, please, Rob. For tonight, there’s no maybe about it. Crazy or not, scary or not, I want you.’
‘Hey, what’s scary about me?’ And he was laughing down at her, his lovely eyes dancing. Teasing. Just as he once had.
‘That’s just the problem,’ she whispered. ‘There’s nothing crazy about the way I feel about you. That’s what makes it so scary. But, scary or not, for tonight, Rob, for the last time, I want to be your wife.’
* * *
For those tense few minutes when they’d first seen each other, when they’d come together in the house for the first time in years, they’d made believe it was the first time. They were strangers. They’d relived that first connection.
Now...it was as if they’d pressed the fast forward on the replay button, Rob thought, and suddenly it was the first time he was to take her to bed.
But this was no make-believe, and it wasn’t the first time. He knew everything there was to know about this woman. His wife.
But maybe that was wrong. Yes, he knew everything there was to know about the Julie of years ago, the Julie who’d married him, but there was a gaping hole of years. How had she filled it? He didn’t know. He hardly knew how he’d filled it himself.
But for now, by mutual and unspoken consent, those four years didn’t exist. Only the fierce magnetic attraction existed—the attraction that had him wanting her the moment he’d set eyes on her.
They hadn’t ended up in bed on their first date, but it had nearly killed them not to. They’d lasted half an hour into their second date. He’d gone to her apartment to pick her up...they hadn’t even reached the bedroom.
And now, here, the desire was the same. He’d seen her in her flimsy nightgown and he wanted her with every fibre of his being. And even if it was with caveats—for the last time—he tugged her into his arms and she melted.
Fused.
‘You’re sure?’ he asked and she nodded and the sound she made was almost a purr. Memories had been set aside—the hurtful ones had, anyway.
‘I’m sure,’ she whispered and tugged his face close and her whisper was a breath on his mouth.
He lifted her and she curled against him. She looped her arms around his neck and twisted, so she could kiss him.
Somehow he made it to the bedroom door. The bed lay, invitingly, not ten feet away, but he had to stop and let himself be kissed. And kiss back.
Their mouths fused. It was like electricity, a fierce jolt on touching, then a force so great that neither could pull away. Neither could think of pulling away.
He had his wife in his arms. He couldn’t think past that. He had his Julie and his mind blocked out everything else.
His wife. His love.
* * *
She’d forgotten how her body melted. She’d forgotten how her body merged into his. How the outside world disappeared. How every sense centred on him. Or on them, for that was how it was. Years ago, the moment he’d first touched her, she’d known what marriage was. She’d felt married the first time they’d kissed.
She’d abandoned herself to him then, as simple as that. She’d surrendered and he’d done the same. His lovely strong body, virile, heavy with the scent of aroused male, wanting her, taking her, demanding everything, but in such a way that she knew that if she pulled away he’d let her go.
Only she knew she’d never pull away. She couldn’t and neither could he.
Their bodies were made for each other.
And now...now her mouth was plundering his, and his hers, and the sensations of years ago were flooding back. Oh, the taste of him. The feel... Her body was on fire with wanting, with the knowledge that somehow he was hers again, for however long...
Until morning?
No. She wasn’t thinking that. It didn’t matter how long. All that mattered was now.
Somehow, some way, they reached the bed, but even before they were on top of it she was fighting with the buttons of his shirt. She wanted this man’s body. She wanted to feel the strength of him, the hardness of his ribs, the tightness of his chest. She wanted to taste the salt of him.
Oh, his body... It was hers; it still felt like hers.
Four years ago...
No. Forget four years. Just think about now.
His kiss deepened. Her nightgown was slipping away and suddenly it was easy. Memories were gone. All she could think of was him. All she wanted was him.
Oh, the feel of him. The taste of him.
Rob.
The years had gone. Everything had gone. There was only this man, this body, this moment.
‘Welcome home, my love,’ he whispered as their clothes disappeared, as skin met skin, as the night disappeared in a haze of heat and desire.
Home... There was so much unsaid in that word. It was a word of longing, a word of hope, a word of peace.
It meant nothing, she thought. It couldn’t.
But her arms held him. Her mouth held him. Her whole body held him.
For this moment he was hers.
For this moment he was right. She was home.
* * *
He’d forgotten a woman could feel this good.
He’d forgotten...Julie?
But of course he hadn’t. He’d simply put her in a place in his mind that was inaccessible. But now she was here, his, welcoming him, loving him.
She tasted fabulous. She still smelled like...like... He didn’t know what she smelled like.
Had he ever asked her what perfume she wore? Maybe it was only soap. Fresh, citrus, it was in her hair.
He’d forgotten how erotic it was, to lie with his face in her tumbled hair, to feel the wisps around his face, to finger and twist and feel her body shudder as she responded to his touch.
The room was in darkness and that was good. If he could see her...her eyes might get that dead look, the look that said there was nothing left, for her or for him.
It was a look that had almost killed him.
But he wouldn’t think of that. He couldn’t, for her fingers were curved around his thighs, tugging him closer, closer...
His wife. His Julie. His own.
* * *
They loved and loved again. They melted into each other as if they’d never parted.
They loved.
He loved.
She was his.
The possessive word resonated in his mind, primeval as time itself. She was crying. He felt her tears, slipping from her face to his shoulder.
He gathered her to him and held, simply held, and he thought that at this moment if any man tried to take her his response would be primitive.
His.
Tomorrow he’d walk away. He’d accepted by now that their marriage was over, that Julie could never emerge from the thick armour she’d shielded herself with. In order to survive he needed to move on. He knew it. His shrink had said it. He knew it for the truth.
So he would walk away. But first...here was a gift he’d long stopped hoping for. Here was a crack in that appalling armour. For tonight she’d shed it.
‘For tonight I’m loving you,’ he whispered and she kissed him, fiercely, possessively, as if those vows they’d made so long ago still held.
And they did hold—for tonight—and that was all he was focusing on. There was no tomorrow. There was nothing but now.
He kissed her back. He loved her back.
‘For tonight I’m loving you, too,’ she whispered and she held him closer, and there was nothing in the world but his wife.
CHAPTER THREE
NOTE: IF A bush fire’s heading your way, maybe you should set the alarm.
He woke and filtered sunlight was streaming through the east windows. Filtered? That’d be smoke. It registered but only just, for Julie was in his arms, spooned against his body, naked, beautiful and sated with loving. It was hard to get his mind past that.
Past her.
But the world was edging in. The wind had risen. He could hear the sound of the gums outside creaking under the weight of it.
Wind. Smoke. Morning.
‘Jules?’
‘Mmm.’ She stirred, stretched like a kitten and the sensation of her naked skin against his had him wanting her all over again. He could...
He couldn’t. Wind. Smoke. Morning.
Somehow he hauled his watch from under his woman.
Eight-thirty.
Eight-thirty!
Get out by nine at the latest, the authorities had warned. Keep listening to emergency radio in case of updates.
Eight-thirty.
Somehow he managed to roll away and flick on the bedside radio. But even now, even realising what was at stake, he didn’t want to leave her.
The radio sounded into life. Nothing had changed in this house. He’d paid to have a housekeeper come in weekly. The clock was still set to the right time.
There was a book beside the radio. He’d been halfway through it when...when...
Maybe this house should burn, he thought, memories surging back. Maybe he wanted it to.
‘We should sell this house.’ She still sounded sleepy. The implication of sleeping in hadn’t sunk in yet, he thought, flicking through the channels to find the one devoted to emergency transmissions.
‘So why did you come back?’ he asked, abandoning the radio and turning back to her. The fire was important, but somehow...somehow he knew that words might be said now that could be said at no other time. Certainly not four years ago. Maybe not in the future either, when this house was sold or burned.
Maybe now...
‘The teddies,’ she told him, still sleepy. ‘The wall-hanging my mum made. I...wanted them.’
‘I was thinking of the fire engines.’
‘That’s appropriate.’ Amazingly, she was smiling.
He’d never thought he’d see this woman smile again.
And then he thought of those last words. The words that had hung between them for years.
‘Julie, it wasn’t our fault,’ he said and he watched her smile die.
‘I...’
‘I know. You said you killed them, but I believed it was me. That day I brought you home from hospital. You stood here and you said it was because you were sleeping and I said no, it wasn’t anyone’s fault, but there was such a big part of me that was blaming myself that I couldn’t go any further. It was like...I was dead. I couldn’t even speak. I’ve thought about it for four years. I’ve tried to write it down.’
‘I got your letters.’
‘You didn’t reply.’
‘I thought...the sooner you stopped writing the sooner you’d forget me. Get on with your life.’
‘You know the road collapsed,’ he said. ‘You know the lawyers told us we could sue. You know it was the storm the week before that eroded the bitumen.’
‘But that I was asleep...’
‘We should have stayed in the city that night. We shouldn’t have tried to bring the boys home. That’s the source of our greatest regret, but it shouldn’t be guilt. It put us in the wrong place at the wrong time. I’ve been back to the site. It was a blind curve. I rounded it and the road just wasn’t there.’
‘If we’d come up in broad daylight, when we were both alert...’
How often had he thought about this? How often had he screamed it to himself in the middle of troubled sleep?
He had to say it. He had to believe it.
‘Jules, I manoeuvred a blind bend first. A tight curve. I wasn’t speeding. I hit the brakes the moment I rounded the bend but the road was gone. If you’d been awake it wouldn’t have made one whit of difference. Julie, it’s not only me who’s saying this. It was the police, the paramedics, the guys from the accident assessment scene.’
‘But I can’t remember.’ It was a wail, and he tugged her back into his arms and thought it nearly killed him.
He was reassuring her but regardless of reason, the guilt was still there. What if...? What if, what if, what if?
Guilt had killed them both. Was killing them still.
He held her but her body had stiffened. The events of four years ago were right there. One night of passion couldn’t wash them away.
He couldn’t fix it. How could it be fixed, when two small beds lay empty in the room next door?
He kissed her on the lips, searching for an echo of the night before. She kissed him back but he could feel that she’d withdrawn.
Same dead Julie...
He turned again and went back to searching the radio channels. Finally he found the station he was looking for—the emergency channel.
‘...evacuation orders are in place now for Rowbethon, Carnarvon, Dewey’s Creek... Leave now. Forecast is for forty-six degrees, with winds up to seventy kilometres an hour, gusting to over a hundred. The fire fronts are merging...’
And all his attention was suddenly on the fire. It had to be. Rowbethon, Carnarvon, Dewey’s Creek... They were all south of Mount Bundoon.
The wind was coming from the north.
‘Fire is expected to impact on the Mount Bundoon area within the hour,’ the voice went on. ‘Bundoon Creek Bridge is closed. Anyone not evacuated, do not attempt it now. Repeat, do not attempt to evacuate. Roads are cut to the south. Fire is already impacting to the east. Implement your fire plans but, repeat, evacuation is no longer an option.’
‘We need to get to a refuge centre.’ Julie was sitting bolt upright, wide-eyed with horror.
‘There isn’t one this side of the creek.’ He glanced out of the window. ‘We’re not driving in this smoke. Besides, we have the bunker.’ Thank God, they had the bunker.
‘But...’
‘We can do this, Jules.’
And she settled, just like that. Same old Jules. In a crisis, there was no one he’d rather have by his side.
‘The fire plan,’ she said. ‘I have it.’
Of course she did. Julie was one of the most controlled people he knew. Efficient. Organised. A list-maker extraordinaire.
The moment they’d moved into this place she’d downloaded a Fire Authority Emergency Plan and made him go through it, step by step, making dot-points for every eventuality.
They were better off than most. Bush fire was always a risk in Australian summers and he’d thought about it carefully when he’d designed this place. The house had been built to withstand a furnace—though not an inferno. There’d been fires in Australia where even the most fireproof buildings had burned. But he’d designed the house with every precaution. The house was made of stone, with no garden close to the house. They had solar power, backup generators, underground water tanks, pumps and sprinkler systems. The tool shed doubled as a bunker and could be cleared in minutes, double-doored and built into earth. But still there was risk. He imagined everyone else in the gully would be well away by now and for good reason. Safe house or not, they were crazy to still be here.
But Julie wasn’t remonstrating. She was simply moving on.
‘I’ll close the shutters and tape the windows while you clear the yard,’ she said. Taping the windows was important. Heat could blast them inwards. Tape gave them an extra degree of strength and they wouldn’t shatter if they broke.
‘Wool clothes first, though,’ she said, hauling a pile out of her bottom bedroom drawer, along with torches, wool caps and water bottles. Also a small fire extinguisher. The drawer had been set up years ago for the contingency of waking to fire. Efficiency plus.
Was it possible to still love a woman for her plan-making?
‘I hope these extinguishers haven’t perished,’ she said, pulling a wool cap on her head and shoving her hair up into it. It was made of thick wool, way too big. ‘Ugh. What do you think?’
‘Cute.’
‘Oi, we’re not thinking cute.’ But her eyes smiled at him.
‘Hard not to. Woolly caps have always been a turn-on.’
‘And I love a man in flannels.’ She tossed him a shirt. ‘You’ve been working out.’
‘You noticed?’
‘I noticed all night.’ She even managed a grin. ‘But it’s time to stop noticing. Cover that six-pack, boy.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’ But he’d fielded the shirt while he was checking the fire map app on his phone, and what he saw made any thought of smiling back impossible.
She saw his face, grabbed the phone and her eyes widened. ‘Rob...’ And, for the first time, he saw fear. ‘Oh, my...Rob, it’s all around us. With this wind...’
‘We can do this,’ he said. ‘We have the bunker.’ His hands gripped her shoulders. Steadied her. ‘Julie, you came up here for the teddies and the wall-hanging. Anything else?’
‘Their...clothes. At least...at least some. And...’
She faltered, but he knew what she wanted to say. Their smell. Their presence. The last place they’d been.
He might not be able to save that for her, but he’d sure as hell try.
‘And their fire engines,’ he added, reverting, with difficulty, to the practical. ‘Let’s make that priority one. Hopefully, the pits are still clear.’
The pits were a fallback position, as well as the bunker. They’d built this house with love, but with clear acceptance that the Australian bush was designed to burn. Many native trees didn’t regenerate without fire to crack their seeds. Fire was natural, and over generations even inevitable, so if you lived in the bush you hoped for the best and prepared for the worst. Accordingly, they’d built with care, insured the house to the hilt and didn’t keep precious things here.
Except the memories of their boys. How did you keep something like that safe? How did you keep memories in fire pits?
They’d do their best. The pits were a series of holes behind the house, fenced off but easily accessed. Dirt dug from them was still heaped beside them, a method used by those who’d lived in the bush for generations. If you wanted to keep something safe, you buried it: put belongings inside watertight cases; put the cases in the pit; piled the dirt on top.
‘Get that shirt on,’ Julie growled, moving on with the efficiency she’d been born with. She cast a long regretful look at Rob’s six-pack and then sighed and hauled on her sensible pants. ‘Moving on... We knew we’d have to, Rob, and now’s the time. Clearing the yard’s the biggie. Let’s go.’
* * *
The moment they walked out of the house they knew they were in desperate trouble. The heat took their breath away. It hurt to breathe.
The wind was frightening. It was full of dry leaf litter, blasting against their faces—a portent of things to come. If these leaves were filled with fire... She felt fear deep in her gut. The maps she’d just seen were explicit. This place was going to burn.
She wanted to bury her face in Rob’s shoulder and block this out. She wanted to forget, like last night, amazingly, had let her forget.
But last night was last night. Over.
Concentrate on the list. On her dot-points.
‘Windows, pits, shovel, go,’ Rob said and seized her firmly by the shoulders and kissed her, hard and fast. Making a mockery of her determination that last night was over. ‘We can do this, Jules. You’ve put a lot of work into that fire plan. It’d be a shame if we didn’t make it work.’
They could, she thought as she headed for the shutters. They could make the fire plan work.
And maybe, after last night... Maybe...
Too soon. Think of it later. Fire first.
* * *
She fixed the windows—fast—then checked the pits. They were overgrown but the mounds of dirt were still loose enough for her to shovel. She could bury things with ease.
She headed inside, grabbed a couple of cases and headed into the boys’ room.
And she lost her breath all over again.
She’d figured yesterday that Rob must have hired someone to clean this place on a regular basis. If it had been left solely to her, this house would be a dusty mess. She’d walked away and actively tried to forget.
But now, standing at their bedroom door, it was as if she’d just walked in for the first time. Rob would be carrying the boys behind her. Jiggling them, making them laugh.
Two and a half years old. Blond and blue-eyed scamps. Miniature versions of Rob himself.
They’d been sound asleep when the road gave way, then killed in an instant, the back of the car crushed as it rolled to the bottom of a gully. The doctors had told her death would have been instant.
But they were right here. She could just tug back the bedding and Rob would carry them in.
Or not.
‘Aiden,’ she murmured. ‘Christopher.’
Grief was all around her, an aching, searing loss. She hadn’t let herself feel this for years. She hadn’t dared to. It was hidden so far inside her she thought she’d grown armour that could surely protect her.
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