But maybe it wasn’t. Maybe, given what he’d just discovered about Prita meant he didn’t have to fight anymore. She was married. If he’d heard right in the hospital, that wasn’t going to change any time soon. She had real reasons for not wanting to enter into a serious relationship with him. Just like he had entering into one with her. Being in a relationship, a long lasting, forever kind of relationship—he was a forever kind of man—was the betrayal of his promise to Anna.
Sex on the other hand, with a woman he liked and desired but couldn’t have a relationship with other than friendship—what did they call that? Friends with benefits? Yes, friends with benefits … well, that was another thing entirely. Especially if it gave him back the control he so desperately needed if he was going to get through this fire season, be the hero to his son that he must be.
Maybe this desire they shared wouldn’t be his damnation. It could be his salvation.
And Prita had told Chandra she deserved to be with someone in that way if she wanted to. Had played along with his claim of being lovers. Maybe it didn’t need to be pretend.
Reid’s voice as he called for Machiavelli brought him out of his reverie. He stared at his nephew who was more like a brother they were so close in age, and thought about how Nat had been the solution for Reid in overcoming his grief and fears after losing his best mate, Luke. Reid was a changed man. Not that he could ever have—or ever wanted—to have what they had. He’d shared that with Anna and in that regard, he was a one-woman man. But he knew from whispers he’d overheard between Nat and Reid, things he’d heard Barb say about when they’d first hooked up and the change in both of them, things he’d observed himself, that the desire between them, the passion, it had most definitely been a large part of the healing. It had helped them both.
Could it help him?
And how on earth did he bring it up as a suggestion to Prita without giving away the reasons he needed it?
Was it as simple as saying that neither of them wanted or was interested in starting a relationship, but what was stopping them from becoming friends with benefits? Maybe. She was a sensible woman. He liked that about her. Maybe if he just treated this like a sensible solution to the desire they were both having trouble fighting, she’d be right on board. Did he have the guts to try?
He looked out at the smoking ruins of her house, the scent of the burn and char still coming in the door Reid had left open making his stomach roil and heave, sweat to prickle his skin, his chest to tighten. He filled his mind with Prita again, the burn of desire as it swept through him when her tongue was in his mouth, her hands in his hair, on his body. The prickling changed, became a rushing, sparking of a different kind of fire, a welcome fire that burned the fear and gut-wrenching weakness and left a strange kind of strength in their wake.
Prita. She was the answer. He had to have the guts to ask her to enter into a friends with benefits relationship with him.
He didn’t have a choice.
‘Nasty business, hey? I didn’t think they’d get it under control.’
He jumped as that fellow—Max Smith he thought Prita had called him? The bloke opening up the candle store and who seemed to have a crush on Prita by all reports—came up to the car. He swung his legs out to stand, thinking of Prita again when the scent of coal and smoke lingering in the air from the fire hit the back of his throat like battery acid. ‘You were here last night?’
‘Yeah. I saw the fire and came down to help. You were pretty out of it.’
‘Yes.’ He remembered Max being there now, helping Prita. ‘Thanks. For the help.’
‘No problem.’
The man kicked the dirt at the side of the road. ‘Is Doctor Brennan okay?’
‘She’s fine. She’s at CoalCliff.’
‘Oh?’
So he was interested in Prita. A curl of something nasty tightened in his stomach, and he straightened, enjoying the fact he had inches and breadth on the other man. ‘Yeah. She’s staying at my place. We’re going to help her run her clinic out of the cottage until insurance comes through and she can rebuild here. She’ll be up and running in a few days.’
‘Oh, well, if there’s anything I can do to help.’
‘No. We should be fine. Thanks.’
The rumble of a car coming closer stopped their conversation and he turned to see a cop car pull up behind him. Reid turned from where he was standing calling for Maccy near the bush that separated the drive from the paddock next door, and lifted a hand in greeting as Constable Thomas Bruce got out of the car. There was a frown on the young constable’s face, his fingers looped into his belt, shoulders back, cap on. Not here for a neighbourly chat, then.
Flynn nodded as the constable approached. ‘Constable Bruce. Have you spoken to Prita yet?’
‘That’s why I’m here. She just gave her statement, so this is now an active arson sight.
