LITMIR.BIZ

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doesn’t come back,’ she said anxiously. ‘I hope the rest of the pod are somewhere out there looking for him and he can find them. Do you know that when a whole pod is beached, and rescued, they try to let them all go at once so they can look after each other?’

      Well, that got us over the awkwardness of the ‘stranger hug’.

      He’d have liked to reply, Not our problem, but now she’d mentioned it, he did feel a little anxious that the porpoise—their porpoise—would be all right.

      Nonsense—he wasn’t even certain porpoises swam in pods, and probably neither was she. The job was done and he needed to resume his walk—without his sleeping bag and without drinking water.

      Alone?

      ‘I don’t suppose you’d like to walk with me as far as Wetherby, or as far along the track as you’re going?’

      She looked up at him and he noticed surprise in the gold-flecked eyes.

      Noticed it because he’d felt it himself, even as he’d asked the question. Wasn’t he off women?

      Taking a sabbatical from all the emotional demands of a male-female relationship?

      Not that it mattered because she was already dismissing the idea.

      ‘Oh, no,’ she was saying—far too quickly, really. ‘I have to run. I’m just off nights and I’ve got to check my daughter’s ready for school on Monday and my sister’s up from Sydney for the weekend, and I think my brother might be in town—’

      ‘Okay, okay!’ he said, holding up his hands in surrender, then he smiled at the embarrassment in her face, and added, ‘Although in future you might like to remember something my mother once told me. Never give more than one excuse. More than one and it sounds as if you’re making them up on the spot.’

      ‘I was not! It’s all true.’

      Indignation coloured her cheeks and she turned to go, before swinging back to face him.

      ‘There’s a fresh water tap just a few hundred metres along the track; you can refill your bottle there.’

      After which she really did go, practically sprinting away from him along the track—

      For about twenty paces.

      ‘Oh, the sleeping bag,’ she said, pointing to the wet, red lump on the beach. ‘You can’t carry it wet, so hang it on a tree. I’ll be back this way in a day or two and collect it so it’s not littering the track, and if you tell me where you’ll be staying I’ll get you a new one.’

      Izzy was only too aware that most of her parting conversation with the stranger had been a blather of words that barely made sense, but she did need to get back, or at least away from this stranger so she could sort out just what it was about him that disturbed her.

      Had to be more than blue eyes and a hunky body—had to be!

      ‘I won’t be needing the sleeping bag.’

      The shouted words were cool, uninterested, so she muttered a heartfelt, ‘Good,’ and turned away again, breaking stride only to yell belated thanks over her shoulder. Duty done, she took off again at a fast jog, hoping she looked efficient and professional, instead of desperate to get away.

      By the time she slowed to cool down before reaching the car park, she’d decided that the silly connection she’d felt towards the man had been nothing more than the combined effects of night duty and gratitude that there had been someone to help her with the porpoise.

      Which, hopefully, would not re-beach himself the moment they were out of sight!

      * * *

      Mac resumed his walk with a lighter pack.

      But vague dissatisfaction disturbed the pleasure he’d been experiencing for the past three weeks. Maybe because his solitude had been broken by his interaction with the woman, and it had been the solitude he’d prized most. It was something that had been hard to come by in the army, even when his regiment had returned from overseas missions and he’d been working in the barracks.

      Strange that it had been the togetherness of army life, the company of other wives and somewhat forced camaraderie, that had appealed to Lauren—right up to his first posting overseas.

      ‘But you’re a doctor, not a soldier,’ she’d protested, although she’d seen other medical friends sent abroad. ‘What will happen to me if you die?’

      He could probably have handled it better than promising not to die, which he didn’t on his first mission. But by the second time he was posted to Afghanistan she’d stopped believing—stopped believing in him, and in their marriage—stopped believing in love, she told him later, while explaining that the excitement of an affair gave her a far bigger thrill than marriage could ever provide.

      On top of the disaster that had been his second deployment, this news had simply numbed him, somehow removing personal emotion from his life. He knew this didn’t show, and he had continued to be a competent—probably more than competent—caring doctor, a cheerful companion in the officers’ mess and a dutiful son to both his parents and whichever spouses they happened to have in their lives at the time.

      He’d always been reasonably sure that his parents’ divorce, when he was seven, hadn’t particularly affected him. He’d seen both regularly, lived with both at various times, got on well with his half-siblings, and had even helped them, at different times, when their particular set of parents had divorced. Walking the coastal path, he’d had time to reflect and had realised that perhaps it had been back then that he’d learned to shut his emotions away—tuck them into something like a memory box and get on with his life.

      Had this shut him away, prevented him from seeing and understanding what had probably been Lauren’s very real fear that first time he’d been sent abroad?

      She’d contacted him, Lauren, when she’d heard he was back this time—an email to which he hadn’t replied.

      He’d wondered if the thrills she’d spoken of had palled, but found he didn’t want to know—definitely didn’t want to find out. In fact, their brief courtship and three-year marriage seemed more like some fiction he’d read long ago than actual reality.

      A dream—or maybe a nightmare...

      Not wanting his thoughts to slide back into the past where there were memories far worse than that particular nightmare, he shut the lid on his memory box and turned his thoughts to what lay ahead.

      Inevitably, to the golden girl—woman—who’d popped into his life like a genie from a bottle, then jogged right back out again.

      She must live in Wetherby, he realised, but the seaside town and surrounding area had a population of close to ten thousand, probably double that in holiday time.

      It was hardly likely they’d run into each other...

      And he’d be far too busy getting used to his new position, getting to know his colleagues and learning his way around the hospital and town to be dallying with some golden sprite.

      Besides which, she had a child to get ready for school so was probably married, although he had checked and she didn’t wear a ring.

      Not that people did these days, not all the time, and there were plenty of couples who never married, and women, and men, too, he supposed, who had a child but weren’t necessarily in a relationship.

      But she had a child, and even if she wasn’t partnered, he was reasonably certain that women with children would—and should—be looking for commitment, for security, in a relationship.

      Not that he did relationships.

      He was more into dallying, and since he’d been a single man again, the only dalliances he’d had were with women who felt as he did, women who were happy with a mutually enjoyable affair without any expectation of commitment on either side.

      The path had wound

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