Love: Classified (24 page)

     “I’ll be in touch through Daisy,” I said, desperate to be alone.

Away I sped, hardly seeing the road through my tears. What had I been thinking? How could I have ever imagined that me – fat, ordinary Virginia
Brook – could ever keep a man like Magnus Winchester happy? I must have been mad to have let myself become so confident, sure and happy. Women like me didn’t deserve happiness. Didn’t I know that? Hadn’t life taught me that often enough? Sure, I’d experienced the joys of great friendships and a fulfilling job but the real joys of being a wife and mother were always going to elude a woman like me.

     At one stage on my journey I had to pull off the road and give way to great hacking sobs that wracked my whole body.

     I had no idea that such pain existed. After more than an hour of weeping I felt calmer. Numb would have been a better word to describe my state. I was beyond feeling, for a while anyway. I stumbled across the paddock beside which I’d parked, desperate for water with which to wipe my salt-stung face. I came to a dam with a puddle of dirty water in the bottom of it, a dead sheep on the bank. Clambering down, I dampened a clean tissue and attempted to soothe my sore skin. The tears had burnt me inside and out.

     The water cooled me and I clambered back into the car and headed north. Not having an idea of where to go or what to do I decided to call in on Colin and Beryl at Arthur River, knowing only too well that Jake and Josie, my surrogate parents, would tell
me I was being crazy and advise me on no uncertain terms to take up Magnus’ offer.

     “I’ve come for that job,” I told an amazed Beryl after queuing at the end of a long line of coach-weary tourists.

     “That fella didn’t work out, eh?” shrewd Beryl asked, taking in my crumpled appearance.

     “It was all too good to be true,” I admitted, biting my lip to prevent it trembling.

     Colin was delighted to see me, planting the chef’s hat on my head and passing me a huge bag of potatoes to peel.

     Although I was flat-out busy over the next few days I couldn’t never entirely block out the insistent, yearning thoughts of Magnus. Every night at around midnight I’d fall into bed exhaustedly after the last bus had pulled away and sleep deeply and dreamlessly for a few hours before he crept back into my brain. I knew I was experiencing a kind of shock and that once the shock wore off there’d be the pain to confront all over again.

     I was completing an order for one hundred and forty rounds of sandwiches one morning when I heard the familiar sound of a van putt-putting up to a petrol bowser.

     I poked my head through the door that opened onto the counter where Beryl stood and saw, through the window beyond, that it was Magnus filling up
the Kombi. I clamped my hand over my mouth so Beryl wouldn’t hear my gasp of surprise and scuttled back to the bread-board.

     Then I heard the bell that always rang when someone entered the roadhouse and peeped through the door opening, unable to fight a compulsion to see how he looked. I also had to know if he was with someone. I saw him alone, standing at the counter, waiting for Beryl to process his credit card. There were dark circles under his eyes and he stood with a hang-dog look that worried me.

     “Here you are dear,” Beryl said, handing him his receipt. “Have a safe trip.”

     “Thanks,” he answered, his voice sending spasms of longing through me.

     “Can I interest you in some lunch?” Beryl, ever the saleswoman, asked him. “We have a new cook and she can even turn a sandwich into a work of art.”

     “I’m not very hungry, thanks,” he said, sounding weary.

     Beryl shrugged, knowing when to back off.

     I heard a shriek of delight from one of the tables inside the café section and Magnus’ name being called.

     “Magnus, come and have lunch with me,” came a melodious voice.

     I leant further out of the doorway to see him smile in recognition and walk over to the table where the solitary woman was picking at a salad. I swallowed hard. The woman was a knock-out. Slender
, elegantly dressed with short, stylishly cut glossy brown hair that emphasised her shapely, feline head, shell-like ears and long, graceful neck.

     “How are you darling?” the woman asked, her long-nailed fingers
rippling across his back as he bent to kiss her on the cheek. The woman turned her face so that the kiss was planted full on her lips.

     “So,” the woman purred
, sliding one long, tanned leg from under the table. It was lean and well-defined, the sort of leg I’d long given up wishing for. “Won’t you join me, just for coffee?” she enticed. “Keep a lonely friend company for ten minutes?”

     “Okay,” he conceded, sitting opposite her although he could have chosen the seat beside her.

     “I’ve missed you since you and your wife split up,” the woman said. “And Vanessa rarely replies to my text messages. But now we’re both footloose and fancy-free. I’m separated too, if you remember. I never thought this day would come. I’d very much like to make the most of it. Perhaps we could meet for dinner somewhere nice. Somewhere romantic.”

     “I don’t think so, Fiona,” Magnus replied, sounding bored. “I’ve actually met someone and I’m in love with her. Although with my luck, she’s run off.”

     I almost ran into his arms there and then but I needed to hear more. I needed to be sure that he was telling the truth in the face of this kind of temptation.

     “She must be very beautiful, to interest you, Magnus Winchester,” the woman remarked, her voice sharply inquisitive.

     “Oh yes,” he said huskily. “She’s exquisite.”

     “And she’s run away from you?” Fiona pursued. “Silly
girl.”

     Fiona’s fingers must have strayed because I saw him take one taloned female hand and place it very firmly and with a loud slap, down on the table.

     “You must describe her to me. I’ll help you find her, if only to size up the competition,” Fiona said, not in the least chastened.

     “She’s perfection,”
Magnus told her.

     “Oh dear,” Fiona sighed. “A size eight, dumb blonde, just like Vanessa all over again. Isn’t that what you men fantasise about?”

     “Not at all,” he told her. “My ideal woman is a size eighteen redhead who can happily converse with anyone from the prime minister to a bus-driver and isn’t afraid of getting her hands dirty.”

     “No wonder you were so unhappy with Vanessa,” she said, laughing shrilly.

     I smiled to myself.
Perhaps,
I thought,
I wouldn’t have to worry about Magnus’ female patients after all.

     “Virginia,” it was Beryl calling from the till, where a line of people waited to pay for petrol. “I’m busy here. Would you please take the coffee orders from the couple in the café? They’ve been waiting a while.”

     I tossed off the chef’s hat and strode into the café, my long hair swirling almost to my waist.

     “Hi Magnus,” I said, my voice low and soft. “Coffee?”

     “Virginia!” he spluttered, almost falling off his chair in surprise. “I was on my way up to Perth with Maggie to find you, to beg you to spend the rest of your life with me.”

     Fiona gawped at me, her mouth opening and closing like a fish’s.

     By now, Magnus was on his feet, his arms around me. His erection pressed insistently into my belly. We were beginning to attract the attention of some of the other people in the roadhouse.

     “I don’t know what I did or said to offend you after the storm,” he said, not caring who heard. “But whatever it was, I take it all back. I love you Virginia. I always will. You’re the only woman for me. Please think about marrying me. If you won’t, I don’t know how I’ll get through the rest of my life.”  

     “I am thinking about it Magnus,” I promised. “It’s just that you make me feel like the heroine of a romance novel and that’s not a role in which I would have cast myself.”

     “But you could get used to it, couldn’t you?” he asked. “You are my heroine. From the first moment I saw you I wanted you. I love everything about you.”

     His arms were around me, embracing my curves and the soft flesh that clung to my hips and bum. I turned my face up, my lips hungry to taste him again.

     “Say yes, damn it,” called Colin, who’d also appeared from the kitchen and was standing in the doorway.

     “Put him out of his misery!” advised Beryl, holding the wriggling Maggie.

     “Say yes! Say yes!” chanted the bus-load of tourists who’d come into the roadhouse to escape
the rain and had been infected by the air of romance we seemed to be exuding.

     “Say yes,” spat Fiona, who looked on enviously.

     “Oh all right then,” I said, pretending to be giving in to public pressure, but overjoyed.

     Everybody cheered and Magnus almost did his back in by lifting me off my feet and making a staggering circle with me raised high so everyone could see me.

When the bus pulled out onto the highway, bound for Esperance, Colin seized the opportunity for a celebration and grabbed a bottle of champagne from deep inside the refrigerator where it had waited years for such an occasion.

     “I think I should leave now,” Fiona said, backing away from the proffered glass.

     “Oh don’t be such a spoil-sport!” Beryl chided. “Drink to their health, at least.”

     They all raised their glasses and Colin said, “To Virginia and…”

     “Magnus,” I finished, grinning at him.

     Beryl gave Maggie a slurp of milk from a champagne glass. “Poor little thing. I heard her whimpering in that van,” she explained. “I couldn’t leave her out there while all this was going on.”

     “I’m sorry to let you down here,” I said to Colin. “I really liked working
with you guys at the roadhouse.”

    “It’s okay. Maybe I can talk Fiona here into taking over,” Colin joked.

     “Actually, it’s not such a silly idea,” Fiona said. “I’ve just been sacked from my position as a marriage guidance counselor and I’m in the market, so to speak, for another job. I’m down here from Perth to visit my brother who farms near here and I wouldn’t mind a bit of a challenge. I can cook, by the way. I do mutton fifty ways, if you’re into economising.”

     “You’re on, girl!” Colin laughed, gulping his wine.

“Do you want to head straight for York?” Magnus asked when we’d slipped away from the roadhouse and were lying on the riverbanks, not noticing the rain. Maggie was gamely and unsuccessfully paddling after the ducks.

     I nodded. “I’ll leave my car here for now.”

     “How are you feeling?” he asked proprietorially
lifting my top and inspecting my belly.

     I grinned ecstatically. “Another period is overdue, as of yesterday. And I’m normal
ly never late.”

     “Can I examine you professionally?” he asked, his eyes
black with lust.

     “Right here, Dr Winchester?”

     “Oh no, Ms Brook. In my rooms. Come on.”

     He took my hand and we ran to Matilda, Maggie tumbling after us.

     “Now at last,” he breathed, swinging me into his arms. “I’ve got you exactly where I want you.”

     He slid his hands under my blouse and cupped one swelling breast and then the other, murmuring how much he loved them. I unzipped his jeans and a shudder washed through me as it always did when I felt the extent of his need for me. He was already fully erect, the glistening pre-cum slipping over my fingers.
I licked them greedily.

     “I cried like a baby when you left,” he whispered between taking long, lazy sucks of each nipple.

     “It was the way you undid my bra that made me frightened,” I said, rubbing his cock teasingly.

     “Why?” he asked, incredulous.

     “Because you’re so damn good at doing it one-handed. It reminds me that you’ve had lots of lovers and I’m inexperienced and naïve in comparison.”

    
“But I’m good at doing lots of things one-handed,” he laughed, showing one of the things while I watched in rapt fascination. I loved it when he gripped his cock and slid his hand to the top to encourage more juice to bubble out of the shiny red tip.

     “What else can you do with one hand, clever Dick?” I asked, amused.

     “I’m a doctor, remember?” he said, his hungry eyes fixed on mine as he lowered me onto the mattress and lay over me, his penis dripping pre-cum across my throat like a diamond necklace. “I can tie a knot in surgical thread using just two fingers and a thumb.”

     “But you must admit,” I objected, the jealousy still nagging in my brain, “that you’ve slept with other women.”

     He nodded as he gently rubbed the tip of his cock over my eyelids, down my nose… He knew exactly how close I was to coming and knew precisely how much more of this tantalisingly delicious foreplay I could take. 

     “You know about Vanessa, my ex-wife
,” he said, smiling as I moaned in delight. “As a med student, before I met her, there were a few nurses. But they were just flings. Nobody was hurt because it never meant anything to any of us.”