at this minute and know that here was paradise.

Enough. Enough. She took his body and held in a fierce possessive hug that had him centred exactly where he needed to be centred, lowering exactly where he needed to lower-and he was there.

She buried her face in his shoulder and she knew she was weeping. He was deep inside her, strong and gentle, plundering yet loving. She moved with him, her body taking her rhythm from his, letting him take her where he wanted but assuaging her own need, reaching her heart, taking her to where she was meant to be.

Taking her to a home she’d never known she could have.

Her eyes were wide in the moonlight as he loved her and loved her still. How could she close her eyes on this wonder? His body in the night was a thing of raw strength and beauty. She marvelled at his beauty as he moved above her, as he loved her. His body was glistening with sweat, with concentration, with desire.

Her man. For tonight, her man. Her path to the future.

But then she stopped thinking. Thoughts gave way to pure sensation as her body reacted to the moment, to his strength, to his love, to her aching, tearing need. The night and the moonlight and the sounds of the waters of the lake merged into her feeling for this man, this wondrous fulfilment of passion that had her crying out, arching, her body moving without her willing it, taking its need and causing the night to merge into a mist of heat and stars and white-hot love.

It went on and on, surging throughout her body, and the moment the sensation eased, another started to build, in a long rolling, burning heat. Over and over. She wept and her hands clutched his body and she knew that her world was right here.

Her love.

And when it finished, when finally he lay back exhausted, still he held her. His arms cradled her and she moulded herself to his body and she felt his heartbeat and knew that in her world things were finally right.

She found the strength to raise herself over him and she kissed him, on the eyelids, on his cheeks, on his mouth, gently, tenderly. He gazed up at her with eyes that were spent from passion but still held all the tenderness she could desire.

‘Oh, God, Ginny…’

‘God has nothing to do with it,’ she whispered, allowing a touch of severity to enter her voice. ‘And if he has, I hope he has his eyes closed. For an unmarried woman to take such pleasure…’

‘No god could deny you pleasure,’ he whispered. ‘After the things you’ve faced…have yet to face…’

‘You mean, if I sleep now I’ll wake up and see you naked in the dawn?’ she demanded, refusing to be drawn where he was taking her, and he chuckled, a deep, glorious chuckle that had her heart twist in a way it had never twisted in its existence.

‘Scared?’

‘I guess I’m not,’ she said, smiling and burying her face in his chest. ‘You are the most extraordinarily sexy man.’

‘I know,’ he said modestly, and she giggled.

‘Ginny…’

‘Hush,’ she whispered, suddenly realising what he might say and knowing she didn’t want to go there. ‘OK, Fergus, you’re extraordinary. But are you going to prove it or are you going to sleep? If you’re extraordinary…’

‘What?’

‘Then you’d be making love to me again. Right now. Your call, Fergus.’

And it was no call at all. He gazed at her for a long time and laughter died and she saw the doubts were still there behind the laughter.

‘My Ginny,’ he whispered. ‘My dream, my heart, my love. My beautiful, golden girl. How can you need me? It can’t be real. It can’t last. But for now… You’re here, you’re my woman, and you want me. You’re a miracle that’s here for the taking and I can’t refuse you, my love.’

‘And why would you want to?’ she demanded with some asperity, and the corners of his mouth twitched into a crooked smile.

‘Why indeed?’

He tugged her down to him, his mouth claimed hers and the whole glorious cycle started again.

Until the phone rang.

Until the medical imperative took over.

She didn’t go with him. There were yet two hours before dawn and this sounded like a simple case of a child with gastroenteritis. One doctor could handle this alone so Fergus could go play doctor and she could stay here and play abandoned lover in the moonlight.

Which suited her mood entirely. But she didn’t feel in the least abandoned.

She lay in what was left of the moonlight, staring out at the shimmering surface of the lake.

She’d sworn never to come back here. This place had been her refuge as a child but as an adult it had represented a security she knew was an illusion.

Was it an illusion? Happy ever after?

‘It’ll end,’ she whispered into the night. ‘It’ll end in tears.

‘But maybe not yet. Maybe I could give this loving business one more chance.

‘You’ll be hurt.

‘Yes, but if I don’t try…’

She rolled over and the mound of blankets where Fergus had lain was still warm. She buried her face in his pillow and thought she could smell him.

‘Now I am being a lovesick teenager. He doesn’t want me.

‘Even if he doesn’t…’

He was off saving the world, she thought. Off being busy, trying to block out pain, trying not to let love creep in at the edges.

He had so much love to give.

‘So do I,’ she told the lake. ‘I thought I didn’t. But tonight…it’s crazy but suddenly there’s more room. For Fergus…’

For whoever.

Fergus might or might not want her for much longer, she thought, and she could cope with that. She had no choice. Tonight had been magic-a wonderful time out for both of them and for her an experience that had resettled her world on an axis it had been shaken off so many years before.

But for Fergus… His pain was raw and new and he’d had no time to adjust to the awfulness of loss. To expect tonight to change him…

‘It won’t,’ she told the darkened lake, and she saw the light fade as the moon slipped beneath the horizon to the west. Soon it would be dawn.

Could she cope with it?

‘I surely can,’ she said, and sat up and hugged her knees. Then she put out a hand and laid it on the ancient floorboards. ‘Touch wood.

‘It’ll take guts.

‘Yeah, but it feels so good…connecting…’ She hugged her knees some more as if she was reassuring a friend. As if she could conjure up Fergus’s body in her arms.

‘It’ll hurt again.

‘I know. But it hurts anyway, and I’m so tired of feeling empty. Dammit, I’m going to try.’ She stared around the ancient boatshed and realised what had happened.

‘I swore never to come back here,’ she told herself. ‘And here I am-back.’

Fergus drove toward the Horace farm feeling…odd. Like he’d just been hauled back from a precipice and he wasn’t at all sure he appreciated the sensation.

He’d been so close to toppling over.

Once when he’d been a young intern in a busy emergency room, an ancient lady had suffered a cardiac arrest on his shift. He’d done what he’d been trained to do. He’d called for the crash cart, he’d applied the defibrillator, he’d worked on her hard for fifteen minutes-and he’d got her back. It had felt great.

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