Our Kind of Love (13 page)

And there he was.

Not for Joe a seat in the waiting room. He was pacing in the main reception area, sandwiched between starstruck Grace behind the reception desk and six pensioners staring at him in wide wide-eyed admiration from their seats in the waiting room. Joe looked dishevelled and worried as hell. His blond hair was standing up in spikes, as if he’d been running his fingers through it, and there was a tension in his hunched shoulders. A black polo shirt hung loosely from his broad shoulders and dark denim jeans completed the beachside look. His eyes, which Anna noticed once again were almost the colour of those jeans, looked to her for half a second.

Then they caught Julia’s face. ‘Are you all right?’ His eyes did a quick flick back to Anna.

Anna looked to Julia for guidance. It wasn’t her secret to tell and she needed to know how Julia was going to spin herself out of this one.

‘Just a mild bout of food poisoning, isn’t it, Anna?’ Julia asked.

Anna shoved her hands into the pockets of her elegant, wide-legged trousers and transferred her weight from one high heel to the other. She wasn’t going to lie but she could fudge it, too. ‘She’ll be fine. Lots of fluid and rest. Remember that last word, Julia. Rest.’

Joe seemed to relax a little at the announcement. He moved to Julia, took her elbow in his left hand and wrapped a protective arm around her shoulders.

‘Now will you call your husband and tell him you’re sick?’ He shot Anna a relieved smile. ‘She wouldn’t let me ring him. Told me I was being ridiculous. All I know is that he’s going to kick my arse when he finds out we kept this a secret.’

‘Settle down, Joe. I’ll handle Ry. You handle the driving.’ Julia fished in her handbag and presented her keys with a jangle.

‘I could tell him we went out for lunch and tied it on, big-time journo style. That you had too much to drink.’

‘You would,’ Julia murmured. ‘Take me home, Stinkface.’

Joe rubbed a hand through his hair. Things were looking a whole lot better than they had an hour ago. It was damn lucky he remembered Anna’s last name. He was freaked out when Julia fell ill. She’d suddenly come over all pale, sweaty, wide-eyed and it had all seemed to hit her in a few minutes. It had freaked him out a little – a lot. So he’d googled Anna’s name and then taken the wheel. She was the only Anna Morelli GP on the ’net, so he took a chance and drove out to her surgery, right in the middle of Adelaide suburbia. That’s how easy it was to find her. The woman who ran off after their night together, who wouldn’t give him a number, was simply a Google search away. His most important job now was to get Julia back home to her husband and her bed. He was responsible for his sister’s best friend and some crazy protective instinct kicked in. He had to get her home.

But, damn it, Anna was right there.

He’d been wanting to talk to her, needing too. To see if she was okay, to help her maybe. He needed to know that having sex with him hadn’t made things worse for her.

He’d been trying damn hard not to remember having sex with her. The way she looked at him with those caramel eyes, the way they’d melted when he touched her. The feel of her hair when he’d run his fingers through it, silky and long and soft. And the body he’d had his hands and lips all over. The body he’d been kind of obsessed with since that night. Joe let out a breath, frustration mixed with relief and pure and simple desire. Seeing her now, so beautiful, and being all capable and doctor-y as well, was like being sucker-punched.

Julia moaned and Joe came crashing back to that reality. ‘Oh God. I feel awful.’

‘Get in the car, you whiner.’ Joe moved to the front door of the surgery and held it open but Julia stopped. When she pulled her purse out of her handbag and fumbled with her Medicare card, Anna shook her off and pushed her gently to the door. ‘Please. Don’t even think about it. Just go home and rest.’

‘Thanks, Anna,’ Julia said. ‘For everything.’

And if Joe wasn’t mistaken, there was something more to that thanks than was immediately obvious. Eye contact just a little too long. The tears in Julia’s eyes. And when Anna reached out to pull Julia into a long hug, well, Joe’s journalistic instincts confirmed his suspicions. There was a secret between these two women.

As they stepped onto the footpath, the unusually warm autumn afternoon hitting them in a shimmering waft as they walked to the car, parked on the street right out front. Joe opened the passenger side door and Julia gingerly positioning herself on the seat. He found the lever to recline it and she leaned back, her eyes drifting closed. It wasn’t much but it was the best he could do. She might get some sleep on the hour and a half long drive back to Middle Point. When he closed the car door and turned, Anna was there on the footpath.

He walked to her. ‘Thanks for seeing her, Anna. I really appreciate it. Ry will, too.’ Anna averted her eyes, glanced up and down the street instead of looking at him. A pimped-up car with a noisy exhaust sped past. Two ladies dressed head to toe in black shuffled towards them and called out something to Anna.

‘
Che pezzo d’uomo
!’
(What a man!)

‘
Sei sposata, Anna. E mio
!’
(You’re married Anna. He’s mine!)

Joe watched the exchange, fascinated by the humour in the old women’s faces and then entranced by the flush that crept up Anna’s cheeks. When she answered them back in fluent, real and passionate Italian, he almost tumbled into the gutter.

She waved at them and laughed as they nudged each other and gave him another long once over before entering the surgery.

‘Your biggest fans?’ he asked, finding a safe place for his hands in the front pockets of his jeans.

Anna reached up to play with the gold medallion on her necklace. It glinted as the afternoon sun caught it and as she turned it over in her fingers, he thought about how snugly it fit between her breasts.

‘Regulars.’

‘You’ve got a busy place here.’

Anna shrugged. ‘Enough to keep me out of trouble.’ And then the flush in her cheeks bloomed again.

‘Listen,’ Joe said and without even thinking, he reached a hand out to her. It came to rest on her arm, where the short sleeve of her silk top revealed honeyed, soft skin. He felt goosebumps and it stirred something in him that felt like hope.

‘Thank you. For seeing Julia.’ He fought the almost irresistible urge to sweep his hand around inside the fall of her hair to the back of her neck and pull her in close.

When she looked up to him, her brown eyes wide and her full lips parted and still, he took another step closer.

‘Joe …’ Anna shrugged his hand from her shoulder, moved so she was out of reach.

‘Ry would want me to thank you for him, too.’

‘It’s nothing. I’m a doctor. Look, my name’s over there on that brass plate. It’s what I do.’

‘Lucky for us. Next time you’re down in Middle Point, you’d better let me buy you a drink. It’ll be my way of saying thanks.’

She replied with nothing but a sad smile and the slightest shake of her head.

‘C’mon. Think about it,’ Joe didn’t want to push her anymore. Maybe he’d planted the seed and she would consider it. Would think about him. He turned to walk to the driver’s seat. It was only after he’d got in and clicked his seatbelt into place, did he notice that she’d followed him, and was peering down to look at him through the open window.

‘Wait, Joe.’

‘Yeah, Anna?’ Was she changing her mind about that drink? Was there a chance he would see her again? Anna flicked her hair over shoulders, stopped as if she was making up her mind about something.

‘Wait one minute.’

Joe glanced over to Julia, who was already asleep in the passenger seat.

A minute later Anna was back, thrusting a plastic bag at Joe. ‘You might need these.’

As Joe opened it to look inside, she reached in and held the top of the bag tight in her fingers. ‘Sick bags. She’ll need them, probably around Willunga Hill when the road starts to curve. Keep them handy.’

Joe nestled them at Julia’s feet. ‘Good thinking. Thanks again.’

‘My pleasure.’

Joe slid the keys into the ignition but didn’t start the car. He didn’t want this moment to end. He didn’t want to drive away.

Anna was still leaning over and looking at him through the open window.

‘So, food poisoning, huh?’ he asked with a smile.

She gave him a knowing look. ‘She’ll be fine.’

‘I should get her home.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Ry will kill me if I don’t.’

‘He will. She needs her rest. You were right to bring her to see me.’

A car stopped in front of them and an old man slowly extricated himself from the front seat. Neither of them were distracted by his shuffle towards the door of Anna’s surgery.

‘Well,’ Joe managed.

‘Well,’ Anna replied, her words and her eyes lingering.

And there, in that look, Joe was struck with the strangest realisation.
She doesn’t want me to leave either
.

And knowing that was enough for him today, was enough to keep hoping that he might see her again. His job now was to get Julia home. He turned the key and the car roared into life.

‘See you soon, Anna.’ He held out his hand to shake hers.

‘See you, Joe.’ She took it, and for a moment they were like that in the street, hand in hand, looking into each other’s eyes.

Finally they let go. Anna took two steps back from the car, straightened and waved them off. As she grew smaller and smaller in the rear-view mirror, the lump in Joe’s chest got bigger and bigger. Any plan he’d had to hit Adelaide’s nightspots had just disappeared.

And he suddenly didn’t care.

CHAPTER
16

Later that evening, after Anna had slipped off her shoes, carefully removed the make-up from her face, and changed into some comfy clothes, she sat on her sofa with a glass of wine. All around her the house was quiet. A gully breeze fluttered the long curtains in her living room and the faintest smell of cut grass wafted through the house. Everything around her was neat and in its place. The elegant lamp on the antique table at the end of the sofa. The elegant coffee table books on her low coffee table that Alex had conveniently left behind. It seemed he didn’t want to read them either. The Persian rug was set squarely on the polished floorboards at perfectly perpendicular angles to the sofa and the original artwork over the fireplace was stylish and eye-catching.

This house was everything her childhood home hadn’t been. She’d grown up sharing a bedroom with Grace in the three-bedroom Morelli family home. There was a single wardrobe in their room and they had one door each. Hanging inside were school uniforms and pretty party dresses, of course, for all the weddings and engagement parties and events on the Italian calendar the family attended. There was a living room and an eat-in kitchen and everyone had to watch whatever her father wanted to see on TV.

Now she had the freedom to watch whatever she wanted. She tried to remember the last time she’d relaxed on the sofa and sat still long enough to take in a movie or a box set of anything. She never had the time and would struggle to find the remote control anyway. Perhaps on the lower shelf of the coffee table by the neatly stacked copies of
The Economist
and
Feast
magazine. Anna couldn’t remember why she’d every subscribed to the glossy food mag. It wasn’t as if she ever had the time or energy to cook anymore.

Her pristine surroundings, with everything in its carefully planned place, seemed foreign to her now as if she’d walked into a stranger’s house by mistake. Nothing about her carefully planned life was real anymore; there was nothing neat about where she’d ended up. Looking around the living room, Anna realised the house reflected everything about what her life with Alex had become; it was set-designed and fake and felt as constricting as a plaster cast.

Seeing Joe earlier that day had stirred up feelings she’d been trying to suppress for months since the wedding last summer. Her plan to forget about that night had seemed straightforward and sensible and she figured all she would have to do was to stay away from Middle Point and everything would be all right. But Middle Point seemed determined to come to her.

And no matter how hard she tried, Middle Point and Joe Blake had become one and the same in her head.

When she thought of it, she didn’t see the white sand and the beach. She didn’t feel the wind on her face or the bright sun on her skin. She didn’t hear the crash of the waves or the squawk of the seagulls.

Every memory of Middle Point was of him and it wasn’t simply about the memory of his lips on hers, the crazy way he danced, the look he’d given her when he was deep inside her, as if he was melting into her.

He was a man who already knew intimate things about her. He was a man who had driven across the city like a maniac to get his friend to a doctor. He was a man who had looked at her in awe when she was being her professional self. He was a man who hadn’t second-guessed her or doubted her word.

The connection they had was not just about the way he looked at her. It was about the way she felt when he did. When he’d got in his car to drive off, she got the distinct feeling he was delaying his departure. He didn’t seem to want to drive away, to leave her.

This was foolish. It was all too soon and too ridiculous and too crazy. Anna wasn’t a psychologist but diagnosed herself anyway. All these budding feelings for Joe were as much a mirage as her décor. She was bent out of shape about him because he wasn’t Alex, because of what had happened to her marriage, not in spite of it.

But as she sank back into the leather sofa, the taste of wine on her lips and the buzz of it fuzzing her thinking, Anna tried to remember the last time she’d felt that wanted, felt herself to be the object of someone’s desire.

Her eyes drifted shut and she tried to find those images and emotions from the past couple of years with Alex, dug deep down into any moments they’d shared that might have meant something. Her last birthday when she’d turned thirty-five? They’d shared dinner with friends in the city, in one of those stylish places where the sound bounced around between the high ceilings and cement floors, where you could barely hear the waitress reel off the specials menu, much less have a meaningful conversation with each other. There had been nothing particularly noteworthy or romantic about that night. What had Alex given her as a gift? Anna couldn’t even remember. A voucher maybe? And what about last Christmas? They’d spent the day having lunch at her parents’ place and then dinner at his. It was routine, something they’d done for a decade. Perhaps a night out at the theatre? She couldn’t remember even doing that with him. What about those spontaneous Sunday morning brunches at one of the beachside cafés they liked? Once, in the middle of winter, but it had been blowing a gale and they’d left quickly with takeaway coffees.