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She laughed. 'What an extraordinary choice of words, Malcolm! You can't possibly have been "a weed"! And did Bronwyn really "get hold of you"?'

Strange. They'd been on the point of leaving, but instead they stayed for another hour, drinking three cups of coffee each and eating the delicate dark chocolates that appeared at the same time without even noticing them. Mostly, they talked about Malcolm's marriage, in an intimate, searching way that was only possible because six years had gone by.

While saying nothing disloyal about his wife, Malcolm sketched a vivid picture of the complexity and shifting balances in their relationship. Bronwyn had been the strong one at first, a year older than Malcolm and possessing a tough carapace built by her over-disciplined childhood in which parental love had been expressed through endless rules and super-high expectations.

Malcolm's childhood had prepared him differently for adult life. His elderly parents, kind and loving but very out of touch, had taught him a huge amount about being sensitive to the needs of old people, being kind to helpless creatures, appreciating art and music and nature, but very little about the rough and tumble of friendship with contemporaries, about healthy competition, goal-setting and determination.

At the beginning of their relationship Bronwyn had lectured him, yelled at him, goaded him into proving himself, until he'd discovered how to use his rich inner resources to achieve success on his own, while she had burned herself out and become a little lost. She had failed her final law exams, tried to start her own clothing design business and finally told him, 'I need a baby, Malcolm. That's what this is all about. Being a parent will give me direction again, I know it, and everything will fall into place.'

Malcolm had believed that she'd been right. She'd had a huge amount of love to give, if only she could have learned to give it tenderly, not imperiously and always seeking an impossible degree of control. They'd both been ecstatic over Elbe's conception, but then... Well, Lucy knew the rest, and knew how Bronwyn had fought powerlessly for control until almost the end.

'I was exhausted,' Malcolm finished. 'Utterly exhausted. At first, she was the one who taught me, but by the end that had reversed and I was battling,
battling
to teach her some of the things I knew about acceptance and peace, and, dear Lord, she was the most difficult, recalcitrant, combative student you can possibly imagine. You had to love her for it, or admire—
value
—her for it, even when you were ready to yell and stomp and
throw
things in frustration.'

He shook his head. Then he added helplessly, 'Sorry. Are your ears falling off?'

She grinned and reached her fingers up as if to test them. 'A bit loose, but I think they'll stay put.'

'What's the time?' He looked at his watch. 'No! Oh, Lucy, I really
am
sorry!'

'Don't be,' she said lightly. 'I'll tell you about my life one day, and then we'll be even.'

She didn't want to admit to him just how precious the past hour had been, and how important in freeing her from the tangled chains of the past. For over six years she'd had questions and conjectures about Malcolm's relationship with Branny. Now she was free from those. She knew the truth, as Malcolm saw it, and it felt like a new beginning.

He must have felt that way, too. As they drove back to her place through the thick night, he said to her, 'Well, I've apologised. Now I'm going to thank you.'

'For—?'

'For listening the way you did. I'd said some of this to my friend Adam several years ago, but he's in Alice Springs now, and we haven't seen each other for a while. As I've acquired a greater distance and better perception, there's been no one to share it with. Till you. And you were the right person, Lucy.'

'I— Well, I'm glad. Happy to be of service.' She used the polite cliché deliberately, still wanting to keep a little distance between them.

Odd creatures we women are, she thought. I'm so glad he chose to confide in me, but if that's the only way he thinks of me, as some kind of agony aunt, oh, that's mortifying, and not what I want from him at all!

A
few
minutes later, Malcolm turned his car into Lucy's drive and switched off the engine.

'Mind if I come in with you?' he said. 'I want to hear a report from Jenny, and creep in to have a look at Ellie before I head off.'

'Of course you must come in,' Lucy told him. 'I'd even offer you more coffee, except that we're already swimming in it, aren't we?'

'No, no coffee,' he agreed. 'A glass of water, maybe. My throat is very dry. You can really smell the smoke in the air, can't you?'

'Yes, there's always something ominous about it in summer, so different from the smell of bonfires on the Queen's Birthday weekend in June,' she answered.

'The wind has dropped for now, which must be helping the bushfire brigades, but I expect it will pick up again in the morning. I'll ring the hospital when I get home and see if they've had any casualties brought in.'

Jenny commented on the smoke in the air as well. 'The girls were a little anxious. I explained that it was the wind blowing the smoke over, and the fires weren't as close to us as they seemed.'

'Thanks, Jenny,' Malcolm said. 'Head off now, while we check on the girls. Make sure you write down the extra hours because I'm bound to lose track.'

'Don't worry, Dr Lambert.'

She said goodnight, and they heard her car start out in the street a minute later as they crept down the corridor to Charlotte's room. Ellie seemed to be having a nightmare. Although lying still, she was making a steady stream of groaning sounds in her sleep.

Malcolm explained in a whisper as he caught Lucy's alarmed look, 'She often does that. I don't know why. It may be the legacy of her asthma, which has tapered off a lot over the past year. I'll try rolling her over. That sometimes makes her stop.'

He bent down and gently turned her from her back to her side, and she did quieten and begin breathing peacefully again.

Lucy tiptoed between the beds, kissed Charlotte and brushed the mass of fair hair off her face. Then they both left the room again. At the front door, Lucy recalled, 'You wanted a glass of water.'

'It doesn't matter. I'll grab one at home.'

But he didn't move. Lucy already had her fingers on the doorknob, ready to open it, but something about the way he was looking at her made her freeze, the action uncompleted.

'Tonight, when we talked,' he began, then amended quickly, 'No, when
I
talked. Did you feel used, Lucy?'

'No.' She shook her head, while meeting his gaze steadily. She knew that colour was beginning to flood into her cheeks, but didn't care if he saw it.

'Good.'

She thought about trying to explain what she
had
felt, then didn't have the courage. She didn't fully understand the conflicting feelings herself, and couldn't expect him to.

He was saying something else. 'Because I wasn't using you. I needed to say all that, but only because— Hell! Maybe I should just...'

He didn't finish. Instead, he just reached out and pulled her against him, slowly enough that she could have pulled away if she'd wanted to, but, of course, she didn't. It was like heaven to be in his arms, like heaven to feel his mouth brush hers, then cling there and kiss her with such thoroughness that she was soon breathless and aching.

The tortured chemistry between them hadn't gone away. It had simply changed, with time, into something richer and freer and not tortured at all. She didn't have to cry about it any more—cry because it was wrong and yet he needed it so desperately that she had to give it to him.

There was nothing to cry about now. She could relish every tingling touch of his fingers along her jaw and through her hair, every press of his thighs against her. She could feel herself enveloped in his warmth and scent and knew, deep down, that she belonged there.

She wasn't thinking yet about how far it would go, although the future did suddenly seem to have taken on a beautiful pinkish hue. Beyond that, though, there was no urgency tonight. Time didn't matter. They could stand there for hours, exploring each other like teenagers, hungry for every fresh sensation. Amazing what lips could do! Wonderful how warm and strong a male body felt!

'Lucy, oh, Lucy,' Malcolm groaned. 'I didn't know that it would feel like this. So
simple,
now. So gloriously good and
simple.'

Except that it wasn't really simple.

'Mummy! Mummy?' said a sleepy little voice, as bare feet came padding along the polished wood of the corridor. 'Mummy, Ellie was making noises in her sleep and it woke me up, but she's stopped now. What are you doing? Who is that man?'

They wrenched abruptly apart and stood there, staring at Charlotte, both of them breathless and unable to see properly. The light was on in the living room, and it came shafting through the open doorway so that they had to peer beyond it to see Charlotte's nightgown-clad figure emerging.

'It's...it's Ellie's dad, love,' Lucy managed.

'But you were kissing him.'

'Yes, I—'

'Like in
Beauty and the Beast,
when the beast turns into a prince and he kisses Belle.'

'Yes, I suppose it was a bit like that, wasn't it?'

Lucy was still having to fight to make her breathing sound normal, and was sure that no Disney kiss ever revealed the full reality of mussed hair, smudged lipstick, hectic cheeks and clothing in disarray.

'Does that mean you're going to get married?'

The innocent question rang in Malcolm's ears like a taunt, and he heard Lucy gasp and then groan under her breath.

He struggled to find words that wouldn't promise too much to Charlotte, but wouldn't dismiss what had just happened with Lucy. Yes, it had been a kiss, a passionate, fabulous, earth-shattering kiss, but...but...

Oh, Lord, he wasn't ready to think about marriage again yet, despite the conversation he'd had about it with Ellie recently. He suddenly understood why he'd felt compelled to bring up the subject with his daughter. At some deep, hidden level, he'd been very much hoping she would say no.

Not that he'd have dedicated himself to a lifetime of celibacy because of a six-year-old child's abstract and casually thought-out preference. But it would definitely have given him the excuse to postpone thinking about it for a bit longer.

He was deeply drawn to Lucy. Not just physically, but mentally and emotionally, too. There was a vast distance, though, between attraction, no matter how broad and sincere, and marriage. His marriage to Bronwyn had engulfed and consumed him. He'd tried to talk about this to Lucy tonight, and she had seemed to understand. He knew she hadn't expected him to kiss her. Her surprise and pleasure when he had, and her immediate response, had turned up the heat inside him by at least twenty degrees.

But now Charlotte's innocent question had confronted him with the fact that for most people it was... Well, there was a song about it, wasn't there? Something about love and marriage go together like a— No one even
drove
horses and carriages any more, but everyone still expected attraction to lead to a kiss, a kiss to lead to bed, bed to lead to love and love to marriage. Not necessarily in that order but, whichever order it was in, it was about three steps beyond where he wanted to take it, or even
think
about taking it, at this point.

He felt as if he were drowning, and his brain came up for air long enough to hear Lucy saying, 'No, Charlotte, love, it doesn't mean we're going to get married.' It had been said in a strangled, panicky sort of tone, which he might have laughed at if he hadn't known just how vital it was to navigate through this emotional minefield Charlotte had unwittingly created, without it blowing up in all of their faces.

It would be disastrous to laugh at Lucy now.

'Your mum was just giving me a goodnight kiss,' he told her cheerfully. 'Big people do that sometimes.'

'Only when they're going to get married,' Charlotte insisted. 'Otherwise it's not
nearly
such a big kiss.'

'Charlotte, let's get you back to bed, love,' Lucy said brightly. 'Do you need to pop to the loo?'

'No.'

'Well, I think we will, anyway.'

Charlotte began to cry. 'I don't want to go to the loo. I want you to marry Ellie's daddy. I
want
you to!'

'Charlotte...' Lucy began helplessly, not sure whether to try and soothe this stubborn mood away or be angry about it. Her daughter didn't usually wake up in the night like this, and all out of sorts to boot.

On a sudden intuition, she reached out to touch Charlotte's forehead. Definitely hot.

She turned to Malcolm, who looked as helpless and embarrassed as she felt. Possibly more so. 'I think she's getting a virus or an ear infection or something,' she said. 'Do your ears hurt, love?'

'No.'

'But you do feel feverish.'

'Is she very hot?' Malcolm said, coming forward.

'No, not in my judgement. You have a feel, Malcolm.'

'Feverish, but not serious, I think,' he said quietly. Charlotte was clutching Lucy's dress now, with big, glittering eyes fixed on Malcolm. 'Give her some medicine and— Look, I'll take Ellie home, I think,' he mouthed. 'You don't need to have her here if Charlotte's going to give you a bad night.'

'Better wait until she's dropped off again,' Lucy mouthed back. 'Or we'll have more tears.'

But in the end it wasn't an issue. Charlotte was persuaded to visit the toilet, and then adjourn to the bathroom for some 'red medicine', which she quite liked the taste of, fortunately. Then Lucy carried her back to bed, and the hot little head was lolling heavily on her shoulder before they even reached the bedroom.