LITMIR.BIZ

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all those years ago she had relished the smell of him on her, his skin on her skin, his mouth on her mouth. Hadn’t wanted ever to shower it away.

      ‘But...mainly because of me.’

      His words were so quiet she had to strain to hear them over the noise of the rain on the metal roof above.

      Bewildered, she shook her head. ‘Because of you? I don’t get it.’

      ‘Because things are different, Sandy. It isn’t only the town that’s changed.’

      His voice was even. Too even. She sensed it was a struggle for him to keep it under control.

      He turned his broad shoulders so he looked past her and through the shop window, into the distance towards the bay as he spoke. ‘Did Kate tell you everything about the fire that killed Jodi and my son, Liam?’

      ‘No.’ Sandy shook her head, suddenly dreading what she might hear. Not sure she could cope with it. Her knees felt suddenly shaky, and she leaned against the countertop for support.

      Ben turned back to her and she gasped at the anguish he made no effort to mask.

      ‘He was only a baby, Sandy, not even a year old. I couldn’t save them. I was in the volunteer fire service and I was off fighting a blaze somewhere else. Everything was tinder-dry from years of drought. We thought Dolphin Bay was safe, but the wind turned. Those big gum trees near the guesthouse caught alight. And then the building. The guests got out. But...but not...’ His head dropped as his words faltered.

      He’d said before that he didn’t want to talk about his tragedy—now it was obvious he couldn’t find any more words. With a sudden aching realisation she knew it would never get easier for him.

      ‘Don’t,’ she murmured, feeling beyond terrible that she’d forced him to relive those unbearable moments. She put her hand up to halt him, maybe to touch him, then let it drop again. ‘You don’t have to tell me any more.’

      Big raindrops sat on his eyelashes like tears. She ached to wipe them away. To do something, anything, to comfort him.

      But he’d just said he didn’t want her here in town.

      He raised his head to face her again. ‘I lost everything that day,’ he said, his eyes bleak. ‘I have nothing to give you.’

      She swallowed hard, glanced again at the scars on his hands, imagined him desperately trying to reach his wife and child in the burning guesthouse before it was too late. She realised there were scars where she couldn’t see them. Worse scars than the visible ones.

      ‘I’m not asking anything of you, Ben. Just maybe to be...to be friends.’

      She couldn’t stop her voice from breaking—was glad the rain meant they had the bookshop all to themselves. That no one could overhear their conversation.

      He turned his tortured gaze full on to her and she flinched before it.

      The words were torn from him. ‘Friends? Can you really be “just friends” with someone you once loved?’

      She picked up a shiny hardback from the pile to the left of her on the counter, put it back without registering the title. Then she turned back to face him. Took a deep breath. ‘Was it really love? We were just kids.’

      ‘It was for me,’ he said, his voice gruff and very serious, his hands clenched tightly by his sides. ‘It hurt that you never answered my letters, never got in touch.’

      ‘It hurt me that you never wrote like you said you would,’ she breathed, remembering as if it were yesterday the anguish of his rejection. Oh, yes, it had been love for her too.

      But a small voice deep inside whispered that perhaps she had got over him faster than he had got over her. She’d never forgotten him but she’d moved on, and the memories of her first serious crush had become fainter and fainter. Sometimes it had seemed as though Ben and the times she’d had with him at Dolphin Bay had been a kind of dream.

      She hadn’t fully appreciated then what was apparent now—Ben wasn’t a player, like Jason or her father. When he loved, he loved for keeps. In the intervening years she’d been attracted to men who reminded her of him and been bitterly disappointed when they fell short. She could see now there was only one man like Ben.

      They both spoke at the same time.

      ‘Why—?’

      ‘Why—?’

      Then answered at the same time.

      ‘My father—’

      ‘Your father—’

      Sandy gave a short nervous laugh. ‘And my mother, too,’ she added, turning away from him, looking down at a display of mini-books of inspirational thoughts, shuffling them backwards and forwards. ‘She told me not to chase after you when you were so obviously not interested. Even my sister, Lizzie, got fed up with me crying over you and told me to get over it and move on.’

      ‘My dad said the same thing about you. That you had your own life in the city. That you wouldn’t give me a thought when you were back in the bright lights. That we were too young, anyway.’ He snorted. ‘Too young. He and my mother got married when they were only a year older than I was then.’

      She looked up to face him. ‘I phoned the guesthouse, you know, but your father answered. I was too chicken to speak to him, though I suspect he knew it was me. He told me not to call again.’

      ‘He never said.’

      Sandy could hear the beating of her own heart over the sound of the rain on the roof. ‘We were young. Maybe too young to doubt them—or defy them.’

      An awkward silence—a silence choked by the echoes of words unspoken, of kisses unfulfilled—fell between them until finally she knew she had to be the one to break it.

      ‘I wonder what would have happened if we had—’

      ‘Don’t go there, Sandy,’ he said.

      She took a step back from his sudden vehemence, banging her hip on the wooden fin of a carved dolphin. But she scarcely felt the pain.

      ‘Never torture yourself with what if? and if only,’ he continued. ‘Remember what you said? Water under the bridge.’

      ‘It...it was a long time ago.’

      She didn’t know what else she could say. Couldn’t face thinking of the ‘what ifs?’ Ben must have struggled with after the fire.

      While he was recalling anguish and irredeemable loss, she was desperately fighting off the memories of how much fun they’d had together all those years ago.

      She’d been so serious, so strait-laced, so under her father’s thumb. For heaven’s sake, she’d been old enough to vote but had never stayed out after midnight. Ben had helped her lighten up, take risks—be reckless, even. All the time knowing he’d be there for her if she stumbled.

      He hadn’t been a bad boy by any means, but he’d been an exciting boy—an irreverent boy who’d thumbed his nose at her father’s old-fashioned edicts and made her question the ways she’d taken for granted. So many times she’d snuck out to meet him after dark, her heart thundering with both fear of what would happen if she were caught and anticipation of being alone with him.

      How good it had felt when he’d kissed her—kissed her at any opportunity when they could be by themselves. How his kisses, his caresses, had stirred her body, awakening yearnings she hadn’t known she was capable of.

      Yearnings she’d never felt as strongly since. Not even for Jason.

      Saying no to going all the way with Ben that summer was one of the real regrets of her life. Losing her virginity to him would have been an unforgettable experience. How could it not have been when their passion had been so strong?

      She couldn’t help remembering their last kiss—with her father about to drag

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