LITMIR.BIZ

       CHAPTER THREE

      HOW HAD THEY gone from hand-holding to being back at war? From what had felt almost like old times to cold apartness?

      Andy caught up with her as she stormed away, his long strides easily covering the ground he’d lost.

      But getting past his careless words wouldn’t be as easy. There’d been no mistaking the raw pain in her voice, even months after they’d lost their baby.

      ‘I’m sorry,’ he began, wondering why the words sounded less meaningful than they would have if his arms had been around her, holding her as he whispered them into her ear.

      But he did touch her shoulder, draw her closer, so he could look into her eyes.

      ‘Of course we’ll help Chelsea decide what she wants to do.’ He ploughed on, realising this wasn’t such a great idea as Ellie’s lips were right there in front of him, and so damn kissable.

      He needed to take a deep breath and walk on.

      He needed to walk and talk, not stop and kiss…

      ‘I imagine she’ll be at school during the day, and hopefully she can make some friends before the end of term.’

      But Ellie, he realised, was no longer by his side. This time she’d stopped several paces back and was muttering to herself.

      ‘You okay?’ he asked.

      ‘Yes!’ Ellie caught up with him. ‘I just hadn’t thought about school. Chelsea’s only sixteen so of course she should still be at school.’

      She hesitated again.

      ‘Although maybe sixteen is an acceptable age to leave school—I’ll have to find out. And will going to school, being pregnant in a place full of strangers, be frightening for her?’

      Andy imagined a pregnant Chelsea having to brave it up in front of a room full of teenage strangers. Guilt at his earlier reaction ate into him. Wasn’t their profession meant to be a caring one?

      Then he smiled as the answer came to him.

      ‘Well, if she’s with us for the weekend, she can join in the soccer barbecue. Most of the team are at the high school. They’re all good kids, they’ll look after her.’

      ‘Oh, Andy! That’s a wonderful idea,’ the woman he loved replied, with such enthusiasm that she threw her arms around him and gave him a hug.

      It was just a quick hug, and maybe it was the shock of it that stopped him returning it, or the thought of it turning it into something longer, more intimate. There was that kiss idea again…

      The mere thought of kissing Ellie made his head spin.

      But it was not to be. Although it did seem to Andy that maybe they could make their way back to being friends—something that had seemed impossible when the emotion-driven arguments had sent her off to sleep downstairs two long months ago.

      Back then, he hadn’t realised just how broken things had become between them, possibly because his mother had often sought refuge from her loud and boisterous family by escaping to the downstairs flat. Even when they had both been upstairs, his parents, in his memory, had never shared a bedroom, his mother being a light sleeper and his father often being called out in the middle of the night.

      After a while he’d accepted it was easier this way—easier to have Ellie in a separate space even if he lay awake at night wondering if she, too, was awake.

      Wondering if she, too, was thinking of their first night together, of their wedding night…

      Sharing a bed and not sharing love, that would have been impossible…

      ‘You’re really okay about having Chelsea to stay?’ Ellie asked, linking her arm through Andy’s as they walked through their gate, down the path, and stopped at the bottom of the steps that led up to the veranda.

      ‘Of course I am. Though we should do something about one of the girls’ rooms to make it comfortable for her.’

      ‘Or let her do it up how she wants it. It will give her something to do over the holidays and I think she’d probably enjoy it.’

      ‘You’re a good woman, Ellie Fraser,’ Andy said, his voice curling into her ears, the deep tone finding its way into her heart.

      ‘You’re not so bad yourself, for a bloke!’ she parried, afraid, because what was happening inside her felt a little bit like falling in love, or the tentative, fragile, beginning part of falling in love, again.

      She’d worked out, back when their world had crashed, that it was okay to still love Andy—that would never change—but it would be better not to be ‘in love’ with him, because that would make the gulf between them too hard to bear.

      ‘You might want to check on Chelsea, while I move my things back into your mother’s room,’ Ellie said. ‘She was going to grab something to eat and go to bed, but if she’s awake I know she’d like to see you and know you’re happy to have her here.’

      And being downstairs, packing what few things she’d actually moved, would give Ellie time to think about her feelings for Andy, something that was easier to do when he wasn’t around, his body sending messages to hers, reminding her of what they’d had.

      She had to think, too, about the decision she’d made so recently—the one to give up and go back to the city.

      She could hardly do that with Chelsea here, and become yet another person leaving her in the lurch!

      She watched Andy take the steps two at a time and turn along the veranda, peering into rooms to find their guest.

      She’d shower downstairs then gather up her things. Upstairs, they’d share the en suite bathroom, as they had when he’d shifted into his father’s room.

      Back then, in the beginning of the separation, any physical contact between them had actually seemed uncomfortable—dangerous even—but these days, close proximity, particularly in a hug of all things, was reminding her body of the passion they’d shared, and sending little flares of desire skittering along her nerves.

      Had he felt it, too?

      He certainly hadn’t hugged her back, or swung her around the way he used to…

      He’d smelled like Andy when she’d hugged him, the faintest lingering scent of his aftershave reminding her—

      The thoughts followed her to bed, where she lay wondering about love and loving and sex and Chelsea until, in the middle of a totally unconnected thought about her mother’s recipe for Christmas pudding, she fell asleep.

      Having found his young cousin fast asleep in one of his

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