Christmas at Jimmie's Children's Unit (8 page)

‘Possums,’ she replied, apparently not taking exception to his tone. ‘I wouldn’t mind the little beggars living in the roof if they’d just stay in one place, but it seems they live on one side and feed on the other so they’re galloping across my ceiling in what sound like hobnail boots all night.’

‘Possums?’

He realised there’d been a lot of conversation after that, but his mind had stuck on the word.

‘Little furry animals, big eyes and long tails, cute as all get out but
not
much fun if they’re living in your ceiling.’

‘Oh!’

The word was obviously inadequate but Angus wasn’t certain where to take the conversation next, and the uncertainty was only partly to do with the fact that Kate appeared to be wearing very short shorts, so from where he stood her pale legs went on forever and he found it hard to focus on anything else.

Fortunately Hamish was less inhibited.

‘Possums!’ he shrieked. ‘Can I see them? Can I, Kate, can I?’

‘Later,’ she said. ‘Just let me finish here and I’ll come down and explain.’

Angus found himself wanting to order her down right away—wanting to tell her he’d do whatever it was she was doing—but having no notion of possums’ habits, nor of what she could be arranging for them, he knew he’d be making a fool of himself if he said anything at all. So he stood and held the ladder steady, and not, he told himself, so he could watch her as she climbed down it. In fact, he turned resolutely away, determined not to have his resolve weakened by long pale legs in short shorts.

Kate told herself that of course she could climb down a ladder that Angus was holding; after all, hadn’t she been successful in avoiding him these past few days, limiting their encounters to purely work contact? But her legs trembled as she came closer to where he stood
and it took an effort of supreme will not to climb back up the ladder and perch on the roof until he grew tired of standing there.

‘What exactly were you doing?’ he asked as she passed him, very close—close enough to see a beard shadow on his cheeks and lines of tiredness around his eyes.

Wasn’t he sleeping well?

She wasn’t exactly enjoying night-times herself, finding it hard to sleep when images of him kept flitting through her mind.

He was so
close
…

‘There’s a hole,’ she said, reaching the ground and backing away from him, lifting a hand to stop him moving the ladder. ‘That’s how they’re getting in and out. I had to measure it.’

‘So you could make a door for them?’ Hamish asked, dancing around with excitement at the thought of a possum door.

‘Not exactly,’ Kate admitted, ‘although I suppose you could call it a door, but I intend to keep it locked.’

‘You want to lock them in?’ Angus asked. It must be something to do with the air in Australia that so many of the conversations he had with Kate had a feeling of unreality about them. Battered savs came to mind…

‘So I can keep them out,’ she replied, speaking to him but squatting down so her face was level with Hamish’s. ‘There are plenty of other places the possums can live, think of all the trees here and in the park. That’s where possums should live—in holes in the trunks and thick branches of trees. Once I fix my hole, they’ll find somewhere else very easily.’

Hamish nodded his understanding, then asked the obvious question.

‘But how will you get them out?’

Kate smiled at him, though Angus imagined there was sadness in the smile. Was she hurting for her own lack of children? Were they
so
very important to her?

Maybe one child would do her?

Hamish—

The thought shocked him so much he straightened his spine and clamped down on his wandering mind, thinking he’d go and cut the hedge on this side, departing forthwith, but she was talking again, explaining to Hamish, and Angus couldn’t help but listen.

‘I’ve been feeding them every night since I came back here to live,’ she told Hamish. ‘Are you allowed to stay up until eight o’clock because that’s when it starts to get dark and they come out of the roof and down here to the garden to eat the fruit I put out. There’s a whole possum family—a mother and a father and two little ones that sometimes ride on their mother’s back but who are learning to climb themselves now.’

‘Can I come and see, can I, Dad?’

The excitement in his son’s voice meant Angus had to look at him,
really
look at him, something he usually avoided as Hamish’s resemblance to Jenna was like a knife blade going through his skin.

And the excitement in Hamish’s voice was mirrored in his little face. Seeing it, Angus could only nod. He even found himself smiling.

‘You’ll come and see them, too?’ Hamish persisted, and Angus lost his smile, knowing for sure he’d have suggested Juanita take the little boy to see the possums. It wasn’t that he didn’t love Hamish dearly, but with
the move and settling in to a new routine, the bond between himself and Hamish had seemed to weaken rather than strengthen. Besides which, more out-of-work hours’ proximity to Kate Armstrong was something he needed to avoid.

‘Of course,’ he responded, suddenly aware that it was selfish to refuse—a kind of self-protection because Hamish looked so like Jenna.

Angus didn’t sound overly excited by the idea, Kate decided, but then she wasn’t so chuffed, either. She wanted to see less of Angus McDowell, not more.

‘Eight o’clock, then,’ she said, and headed for the shed where she hoped she’d find a piece of timber the size she wanted. Unfortunately the gate was in that direction so Angus fell in beside her, while Hamish raced excitedly back to his place to tell Juanita about the possums.

‘Just what do you intend doing about the hole?’ Angus asked.

Ah, easy question!

‘I’ll cut a piece of timber to fit over it and nail it in place. From the look of it, someone’s tried to fix it before using some kind of magic glue to stick fibro over the hole but the possums were too cunning for that. They just ate the glue, or got rid of it some other way.’

She realised Angus had stopped walking and turned back to check on him. He was standing stock-still, staring at her with an unreadable expression on his face.

‘What’s up?’ she asked, although she knew what was wrong with
her.
Just looking at the man raised her heart rate.

‘The way I figure it, you wait until the possums come out, then you go and cover their hole, that right?’

Kate nodded.

‘Up that rickety old ladder,
and
in the dark because they won’t come out ‘til dusk? You were going to do that yourself, telling no-one who’d go looking for you if you fell, asking no-one for help?’

Kate nodded again, although she was starting to feel peeved. It was none of his damn business what she did, yet he was sounding like a father admonishing a wayward teen.

‘Didn’t it occur to you how dangerous that was?’ he demanded, and she forgot peeved and smiled.

‘Angus,’ she said gently, ‘this is the twenty-first century. Women do these things. They take care of themselves, and if that includes minor repairs to their homes, then that’s part of it. Actually,’ she added after a momentary pause, ‘they’ve been doing it for centuries. I bet it was often the woman who climbed on top of the cave to move dirt and stones over places where the rain got in. The men would have been off chasing bears and wouldn’t have considered a bit of water over the fire an inconvenience.’

‘I wasn’t thinking about sexism or what women can or can’t do. There’s a safety issue,’ he countered, but something in the way he said it didn’t ring true.

Kate, however, went along with him.

‘The ladder might look rickety but it’s perfectly safe,’ she assured him, but he didn’t look any happier than he had when the whole stupid conversation had begun.

They parted, Kate leaving Angus hacking at the hedge while she continued on to the shed, not thinking about oddments of timber at all, but about a little warm place inside her that seemed to think Angus’s concern might have been personal.

Fortunately it turned out to be one of those afternoons when the sensible part of her brain held sway. It seemed to laugh so loudly at the thoughts of the emotional part that she knew she’d got it wrong.

Which was just as well, she told herself, although a heaviness in her chest told her she did not believe that at all!

T
HEY
came, the tall man and the child, as dusk was falling, filling Kate’s backyard with shadows. Urging Hamish to talk softly, she led them into her kitchen and lifted him onto the bench beneath the window.

‘See,’ she said quietly, ‘just there under the lemon tree, I’ve a little table with cut-up apple and banana and some cherries on it.’

She had the outside light on, knowing its soft yellow glow didn’t disturb the nocturnal animals.

Holding Hamish steady on the bench, she was aware of Angus moving up behind her, aware of the warmth of his body close, and even the scent of him, citrusy yet still male. It was some primordial instinct that had her body responding, she told herself, trying hard to concentrate on Hamish in order to blot out the effect Angus was having on her hormones.

‘Listen,’ she whispered to Hamish, ‘can you hear them scrabbling down the tree?’

Hamish nodded, his little body rigid in her hands, though she could feel excitement thrumming through him. The longing for a child—her child, family—zapped through her like an electric current, shocking her
with its intensity. It had to be because she was holding Hamish, because normally the longing was no more than a vaguely felt dull ache.

Well, at least it had shocked her out of focusing on the man behind her.

‘Look, Dad, look!’ Hamish said excitedly, and Kate was happy to yield her place to Angus so he could hold his son and share the excitement as the small furry animals with their pointed noses and big bright brown eyes landed on the fruit table, the older pair looking around, checking their safety, while the two youngsters began to eat.

‘Oh, they’ve got little hands!’ Hamish cried as one of the possums turned towards them, a piece of apple in its paws, sharp white teeth nibbling at it.

‘They’ve got wonderfully expressive faces,’ Angus said, a note of genuine delight in his voice as he turned to smile at Kate.

‘I know,’ she agreed, ‘and I love them to bits, but they are
not
going to continue living in my ceiling!’

They watched in silence, broken only now and then by Hamish’s exclamations of wonder and delight. Then, the feast finished, the possums leapt into the branches of the lemon tree and, from there, scrambled into a jacaranda, scurrying up the trunk, then out along one of the top branches, from which they leapt into a eucalypt.

‘There’s a hole in the trunk of that tree where they can live,’ Kate told Hamish. ‘They could go and live in the park but they probably won’t because they know they get fresh fruit here every night.’

She’d lifted him off the bench and carried him outside as the possums departed, and though she enjoyed the heaviness of his tired body in her arms she knew she had to hand him over to his father.

‘Can I come and see them again?’

She was about to answer when she realised it was probably way past his bedtime. Fortunately Angus answered for her.

‘Perhaps in winter when it gets dark earlier,’ he said, ‘although maybe we should think about putting out some fruit some nights, just as we used to put out bird feed for the birds in winter back home.’

Back home!

The phrase echoed in Kate’s head as Angus lifted his son from her arms and, after thanking her, walked towards the gate in the hedge.

It was a reminder that on top of all the other reasons she shouldn’t be attracted to this man, he didn’t really belong here. Although as far as she knew he wasn’t on a time-limited contract. Silly woman! Stop thinking about him. Get on with the job you have to do!

Angus kissed Hamish goodnight and left him with Juanita, determined to get back to Kate’s place before she began her precarious task on the ladder. He’d go up and do it himself, and to hell with her ‘liberated woman’ attitude. After all, what use was an injured anaesthetist to him?

Too late! By the time he returned to his backyard she was already at the top of the ladder, and he could hear the hammering even before he walked through the gate.

Now he was in a dilemma! He didn’t want to startle her, but he couldn’t
not
approach. The least he could do was hold the ladder steady.

‘I’ve come back,’ he said, speaking quietly. ‘And if you climb down, I’ll do that for you.’

‘I’m nearly done,’ she answered cheerfully. ‘Once I had the size it really wasn’t difficult. There were studs under the soffit I could nail to, and though I feel just the teensiest bit guilty about shutting the family out of their home, at least I’ll get to sleep more easily.’

‘Which is more than I’m doing at the moment,’ Angus muttered to himself.

He only realised he’d spoken the thought out loud when Kate said, ‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Oh, nothing,’ he told her. ‘I was just wondering why you haven’t someone in your life you can get to do these jobs.’

Well, he
had
been wondering that earlier! The ‘someone’ might be a boyfriend or partner and he was far more curious about her single status than he should be!

‘Are we back on the “man’s job” thing?’ she asked, beginning to come down the ladder so it moved in his hands.

‘Not really,’ he admitted, ‘but it’s hard for most men to think a woman is just as capable at odd jobs as they are. In fact, you’re probably far more capable than I am. I’m a total fool when it comes to hammers—I seem to hit everything but the nail.’

Blithering, that’s what his mother would say he was doing, but as Kate came closer he realised he’d either
have to change the way he was holding the ladder, or let her finish her climb to the ground right through his arms.

The silly conversation ceased but he couldn’t let go of the ladder, and although he pushed himself as far back as he could he still feel her body slither against his as she reached the lower rungs. A slight sway of the ladder and she was in his arms, all reason forgotten as he lifted her off the second bottom rung, setting her on the ground, turning her, kissing her, kissing her with the desperation of a—

He had no idea how to classify his desperation—just knew it existed, for his hands were clamped around her body and his lips were pressed to hers, his tongue already exploring the taste of her, the shape of her lips, the hardness of those neat white teeth…

It could have been a minute or an hour later that she moved against him, pulling back, smiling weakly at him in the yellow outdoor light.

‘Surely only a fool would kiss a woman with a hammer in her hand,’ she said, but though her voice was steady, he could see the unevenness in her breathing, see the way she was drawing air deep into her lungs. To replenish what she’d lost during the kiss or to steady her heartbeats as he was trying to steady his?

She should have hit him with the hammer, Kate thought as she waved the tool aloft. Or hit herself! Her heart thudded in her chest and no amount of denial or sensible talk could convince her she
wasn’t
attracted to this man.

‘I don’t do serious relationships.’ The words were as blunt as hammer hits would be, his voice deep and husky as if he’d had to force it out past innumerable obstacles.

Keep it light! Kate warned herself.

‘And you’re telling me this, why?’

She even managed a smile as she asked.

‘Because I’m about to kiss you again and I thought you should know,’ he said, and before she had time to make sense of the statement, he’d turned the words to action. He reached out, removed the hammer from her hand and dropped it on the ground. One arm clamped around her, drawing her close against his body, tucking her into it as if to fit a missing piece of a jigsaw puzzle, then the fingers of his free hand grazed her chin, tipping her head, fingers running into her hair.

By the time his lips met hers, Kate was breathless with the delay, her body throbbing with a desire she’d never felt before. Had he felt it, tasted it with the brush of lips on lips, so that his mouth became demanding, insistent, forcing her lips open as if he needed to claim all he could of her in a kiss?

She was melting, floating, boneless in his arms, held upright by his strong hand against her back, the other tangled in her hair. And he murmured as he kissed—muttered, really—little words and sounds she really couldn’t make out, although they sounded more like reprimands than endearments.

But the noise did nothing to diminish the potency of the kiss. If anything, it intensified the excitement, so when Kate realised she was making little moaning noises, she didn’t try to stop them. She surrendered to
sensation, enjoying the searing heat of desire along her nerves, the burning need settling at the base of her abdomen.

Crazy as a loon! Angus didn’t think he’d ever used the expression he’d heard often in the U.S., but it was the only one that seemed to fit. Yet even as it echoed in his head, and he chided himself for his behaviour, he couldn’t take his lips from hers, couldn’t release her body from his clasp. He wanted her—dear heaven but he wanted her—and kissing her like this, feeling her response, there was only one place they’d end up and that was in bed.

Hers, obviously. He’d never paraded any of the women he’d occasionally enjoyed relationships with in front of Hamish.

She was so slight and delicate, like quicksilver in his arms, yet the breasts he could feel against his chest were real and soft and full and, as his hand slid to her butt, he felt its curves. But it was her mouth that still demanded most of his attention. Syrup sweet, that mouth! Maple syrup! Years in the States had given him a taste for it and now he tasted it in Kate—addictive.

Then she was gone, warm night air where her body had been, a distance of perhaps a foot between them.

‘
Not
a good idea, Dr McDowell,’ she said, although the flush on her cheeks and the glitter in her eyes suggested otherwise.

‘You’re going to deny there’s an attraction between us?’ He was still trying to work out how she’d slipped away from him, while thwarted lust was making him tetchy.

‘Of course not.’ She shook her head to emphasise the words, the wild red curls flying every which way.
‘It’d be easier to deny the sun rising, but that’s all it is, Angus, attraction, and at my age I really don’t want a go-nowhere affair. If I’m putting time and energy into a relationship, then I’d like to think there might be some future in it.’

‘So every relationship should lead to marriage? Is that what you’re saying?’ Maybe he was a tad more than tetchy!

‘Of course not,’ she snapped. ‘I’m not entirely stupid. But I don’t see the point of going into a relationship that has nowhere to go and you’ve made it clear anything between us
would
have nowhere to go. What was it you said? “I don’t do serious relationships”? Well, that’s fine, and I like the fact you set out the guidelines from the beginning, but I’m entitled to do the same, and I don’t want to go into something just for the sex.’

‘It wouldn’t just be sex,’ Angus muttered—not good that he was down to muttering already. Muttering was usually part of losing an argument. But he persevered anyway. ‘We enjoy each other’s company. We can have dinner, go to the theatre—’

Kate couldn’t help but laugh, shaking her head at her behaviour at the same time, but unable to control the gurgles of mirth that were bubbling up from deep within her.

‘Oh, Angus, if you could only hear yourself. We could go to dinner—yep, and then back to my place to bed. We could go to the theatre and—’

‘Okay, I get your point,’ he growled. ‘I can even see it from your side and understand, but don’t think for a moment this discussion is over because whatever it is between us is so strong I doubt either of us can resist it.’

The growl became a husky whisper as he added, ‘Or can you?’ before he took her in his arms and his mouth claimed hers once again.

Enjoy it while you can.
That was Kate’s last rational thought before sensation took over and she floated on the blissful cloud of desire he seemed to generate so easily.

It couldn’t just be the way he kissed.

The thought eased into her head as she turned her lips away from his to catch her breath. There had to be more to the way he made her feel than just kissing. Perhaps the way her body fitted his had something to do with it. She pressed experimentally closer and went back to kissing. But not mindlessly this time, for her sensible brain was chiding her the whole time

Idiocy! Plain and simple. Stop before it becomes impossible to stop.

But she couldn’t—wouldn’t—because kissing Angus was the most exciting, enthralling, stupendous thing she’d ever done…well, that she could think of right now! Perhaps if they kept to kissing, a kissing relationship…

‘You’re not behaving like someone who doesn’t want to get involved with me.’

The accusation was delivered with a warm breath close to her left ear and she shivered as his tongue flicked, then his teeth nibbled gently on her earlobe.

‘I never denied the attraction,’ she whispered back, kissing him this time, pressing her lips to his as a punctuation mark at the end of the sentence. Then a sigh filtered out and she pushed away.

‘I do mean it, Angus. I really don’t want to go into a pointless relationship—’

He moved but not so far away that he couldn’t still clasp her loosely, holding her within the circle of his arms so his strong features were in profile against the yellow light and she could see his lips—
those
lips—move as he spoke.

‘A lot of relationships turn out to be pointless,’ he reminded her. ‘There are never guarantees that everything will work out. Surely it’s not so much how you go into them as how you come out of them.’

A hopeless mess, that’s how I’d come out of a relationship with you, Kate thought, but she didn’t say it. I’ve done that before and really do not want to do it again.

He was making some kind of point here, and she should have an argument to counter it, but her brain was still fuddled from the kissing and her body was suddenly very, very tired.

‘I am not going to argue semantics with you tonight,’ she said, then regretted saying anything when he grinned at her and restarted all the fizzing sensations that had been happening along her nerves.

‘Aha, so that means we’ll have another night to argue them.’