bad taste. Almost as bad taste as fathering a child while you’re engaged to someone else.’ She hesitated and then stooped and kissed him lightly on the forehead.
‘Goodbye, Malcolm,’ she said and stood back to let him go.
She was…crying?
Joss turned to find there were tears welling in Amy’s eyes.
Damn the man. He was so angry he felt like following the van, stopping it and dislocating the other hip.
Had he been mistaken in telling her about Malcolm’s infidelity? Or in forcing Charlotte to tell her?
He thought about it. Maybe Malcolm could have convinced Charlotte to keep quiet. Maybe Amy would still have married him, had a couple of kids, been happy with her weekend husband until her six years were done.
What else was there for her?
Anything, he thought angrily. There had to be a life for this woman-a life that she wanted rather than the one dictated by the despotic old fool, her stepfather.
He scowled at the retreating back of the police van and then looked up to find Amy watching him.
‘Why didn’t you go when you had the chance?’ she asked. ‘You could have escaped.’
Was that what he wanted? To escape? He thought about it and looked at her pale face and thought about it some more.
‘I talked to Jeff,’ he told her at last. ‘He reckons if the rain doesn’t start again they’ll have a ferry lined up by tomorrow. Bertram and I can drive out of here under our own steam.’
Her face closed in pain-but he wasn’t sure. Was it pain for him-or pain for Malcolm?
Maybe even she didn’t know.
‘Bully for you,’ she said, and turned and walked into the nursing home without another word.
CHAPTER TEN
JOSS popped in to check on Charlotte before he went home, and found her weeping into her pillows.
‘He’s just weak,’ she sobbed. ‘I didn’t see it before. But he’s a fool. Thinking I’d do something to ruin our future, dashing here in his stupid speedboat in this weather, thinking Amy wouldn’t find out…’ She took a deep breath. ‘You know, I really did think he was doing this for Amy’s sake. I thought he was committed, and it was too late for him to draw back. I was even sympathetic. But now… I just don’t know any more.
Whew! It seemed Malcolm had blotted his copybook in more ways than one. If Malcolm wanted a long-term relationship with this lady, he had a few bridges to build, Joss decided. As it was, he’d gone from having a relationship with two women to being very close to having a relationship with neither.
Amy was looking as bleak as Charlotte.
They drove home in the dark together but there seemed little to say. There was a constraint between them that was growing worse all the time.
He should have kept his oar out of her affairs. She was looking like she’d lost her world.
What was it with the creep? What did Malcolm have that Joss didn’t?
The thought brought him up sharply. For heaven’s sake, was he jealous?
Jealous of a guy with two relationships?
No. He was jealous of a guy who’d had Amy’s heart in the palm of his hand.
His leg hurt. All of him hurt. All of him ached, and it wasn’t just physical. He ached for Amy. He ached for the impossibility of the whole damned set-up.
He ached.
Back at the house, Bertram greeted them with the joy of one who’d been abandoned for at least a month.
He needed a run.
‘I’ll take him to the beach,’ Amy told him. ‘You put yourself to bed. Your leg must hurt.’
It didn’t hurt so much any more. Not if it meant not going to the beach with Amy.
This was his last night here. Tomorrow the ferry would be operating and he’d be out of here.
‘I’ll come.’
‘Your leg…’
‘My leg can drop off for all I care. I’ll come.’
So they walked, slowly in deference to Joss’s stitched leg. He’d have gone faster but she deliberately held back. She was wearing faded jeans and a big sloppy sweater. Some time during the day her braid had started to work free and she hadn’t had time to rebraid it. She looked like part of the landscape, he thought. A sea witch. Lifting her face to the sea. Drinking it in.
She looked free.
She was anything but free.
The dog ran in crazy circles around them, the circles growing larger and larger as he revelled in this, his last night on the beach. Tomorrow Bertram would be back in his hospital apartment, Joss thought ruefully, limited to two long runs a day. After the freedom of the seashore it’d seem like a prison.
Sydney would seem like a prison.
He put a hand down and suddenly Amy’s hand was in his. It was almost an unconscious gesture on his part-to take her hand-but when he’d done it, it felt good.
It felt great!
She felt like his woman.
She loved Malcolm?
‘He’s a rat,’ he growled, and he felt rather than saw her surprise.
‘I know.’
‘You won’t take him back.’
‘No. I won’t take him back.’ She was speaking as if from a distance-as if speaking to herself. ‘I never should have got engaged to him in the first place.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I didn’t love him.’
There. The thing had been said. It was out in the open, to be faced by the pair of them.
‘But still you agreed to marry him,’ he said cautiously and she nodded. She kicked a ball of sand before her and it shattered into a thousand grains and blew away on the wind. The weather was clearing by the moment. Joss was wearing her father’s overcoat but he hardly needed it.
The moonlight was on their faces. The salt spray was gentle. It was their night.
‘I just can’t handle it,’ she said tightly. ‘I know I’m doing a great job here, I’m keeping all these people happy. Just…what about me? That was why I got engaged to Malcolm. So I could have a life-any life-apart from the nursing home.’ She kicked another lump of sand but this time it didn’t dislodge and she almost tripped. ‘Damn,’ she said, and he knew she wasn’t speaking about the sand.
‘Take me out to your rock,’ he said on impulse, and she hesitated. ‘Go on.’ His hand was still in hers. ‘It’s my last night here.’
‘It’s my special place.’
‘Share it with me.’
‘You don’t want…’
But he was propelling her forward. ‘I want.’
‘You’ll get your feet wet.’
‘Heroes don’t mind wet feet,’ he told her. ‘Not when in pursuit of fair maidens.’
She stared at him for a long, long moment, and then, without a word, she turned and led him out across the rocks.
And when they reached it, he turned her and took her firmly into his arms.
