could catch a plane home to England from Sydney. How about if we phone your mother? That might make you feel like things are real.’
He was talking for the sake of talking, not waiting for a response, keeping his voice low and gentle, keeping the message simple. You’re safe, there’s no threat, you’re under control.
The shudders were easing. She was curled against his body as if she was taking warmth from him, and maybe she was. He hadn’t undressed to sleep-he’d hauled some rugs over himself and relaxed on the settee, knowing he’d be up two or three times in the night to check on Gerry. He was grateful for it now. He was in his Flight-Aid uniform. The shirt was thick, workmanlike cotton. If he’d undressed, as she had…
It’d be skin against skin…
And he could stop his thoughts going there right now.
He did stop his thoughts going there. Discipline. Nineteen years of discipline since…
‘I’m… I’m sorry.’ She was recovering enough to talk, but not enough to pull away. She was taking every shred of comfort she could find. Huddled against him, spooned against his body, wrapped in quilts, she needed it all. ‘I shouldn’t… I woke you…’
‘Nightmares are the pits,’ he said softly, and he smelled her hair and thought… and thought…
And didn’t think. It was inappropriate to think.
‘I didn’t… I mean, I don’t know why…’
‘You didn’t talk to the psychologists back at Whale Cove?’
‘I didn’t need to.’ That was better. There was a touch of asperity in her voice. She had spirit, this woman.
If she didn’t have such spirit she’d be dead, he thought, and the idea made him hold her tighter. For some reason…
Well, for a very good reason it was good she wasn’t dead. But… Why was it
‘I’m okay,’ she said, but she didn’t move.
‘You’re freezing. You pushed all the covers off. Stay where you are until you’re warm.’
She was silent for a while and he could feel her gathering her thoughts, gathering her senses. Figuring out what had happened. How she’d ended up where she was.
‘So I didn’t have any blankets on?’ she said at last, cautiously, and he grinned. The woman in her was back.
‘Nope.’
‘Oh, my…’
‘Don’t worry about it. I’ve seen worse things come out of cheese.’
She stiffened. She sat up and swivelled. ‘Pardon?’
‘I’m a doctor,’ he said, apologetically. ‘I learned anatomy in first year.’
‘I am
‘No.’
‘I’m your colleague.’
‘Yes.’ He thought about it. ‘Yes, ma’am.’
He felt her smile rather than heard it and it felt good. To make her smile…
But suddenly he was thinking of her back in the water again, and this time it was he who shuddered.
‘Hey,’ she said.
‘Sorry.’
‘You’re cold.’
‘Nope.’
‘I’m fine. You can go back to bed.’
‘You’re still shaking.’
‘Not much.’
‘I could go across and get some heat pads from Joyce.’
‘No,’ she said, and suddenly the fear was back in her voice. Born straight out neediness.
It had been some nightmare.
He’d had nightmares himself. As a kid. One of his stepfathers had enjoyed using a horsewhip. The beatings themselves hadn’t been so bad. Waking up, though, in the night, when dreams blended reality into something worse…
Okay, he wouldn’t leave her.
‘The bed’s big,’ she whispered. ‘Sh-share?’
He stiffened. She felt him stiffen, and he felt her immediate reaction. Indignation.
‘We’re colleagues,’ she said, pulling away. Backing against the bedhead. Eying him with something that looked suspiciously like scorn. ‘We have one bed. Why does everything have to be about sex?’
‘I didn’t think it was about sex.’
‘It wasn’t, until you reacted like that.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like I’d jumped you. Go back to your sofa.’
‘No.’ He could cope with her need, he thought. She was a colleague.
No. She was a patient. Think of her as a patient.
The lines were blurring. He wasn’t sure how he thought of her. But he knew he couldn’t leave her.
‘Why not?’ she demanded.
‘Because one of two things will happen,’ he said. ‘Either you’ll lie and stare at the ceiling for the rest of the night, scared to go back to sleep. Or you’ll go back to sleep and the nightmare will be waiting. You’re not out from it yet.’
‘How do you know?’
He knew. If the shaking hadn’t stopped…
‘So what’s happened to you?’ she asked, her voice suddenly gentling, and that caught him so unawares he could have dropped her. Only he no longer had her. She’d slipped back onto the bed and only her feet were still touching him.
He wanted, quite badly, to be holding her again.
The thought jolted him. What was happening here?
He didn’t react to women like this, but she’d somehow pierced something he’d hardly known he had. It was like she’d opened some part of him he’d been unaware existed.
It made him feel exposed. He had to get it sealed up again fast, but how could he do that while she was… here?
‘Harry says you have a daughter.’ Her voice was suddenly prosaic, like they were making polite conversation at a dinner party. She tugged her quilt. He let it go and she pulled it over her. She huddled under it and she tried to hide the next wave of shivers. ‘What’s her name?’
‘Harry talks too much.’ He sighed. ‘Lucy.’
‘You want to tell me about her?’ She was eying him over the top of the quilt. ‘I’m guessing Lucy isn’t one of 2.4 children in a suburban back yard with Mummy in her apron and a casserole warming on the stove.’
‘There are no slippers and pipe waiting at my place.’ He said it almost self-mockingly and she slid to the far side of the bed and hauled one of her disarranged pillows to the empty side. She patted it.
‘You want to tell me about it?’
She was still asking for help. He knew she was. She couldn’t camouflage those tremors. This woman was needy.
So what was stopping him lying on the spare pillow, hauling up a quilt and telling her about Lucy?
Pride? Fear? Fear at letting someone as perceptive as she was close?
He wouldn’t be letting her close. Or… no closer than she needed to be to get her warm.
She wanted distraction from terror. What harm?
He sighed. He slid onto the pillow and tugged up a quilt. Then, because it was what she needed and he knew it was, he slid an arm around her shoulders and tugged her close. She stiffened for a moment, but then he felt her relax. It was as if she, too, was reminding herself to be sensible.
‘Back to front,’ he growled. ‘I can warm you more that way.’
