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gave me the impression he wasn’t too positive about the outcome.’

      As Will was still feeling startling and unfamiliar reactions to Alex’s hug, he wondered if this was wise, but she was entitled to ask questions about her father’s health.

      But beyond that, he was intrigued. The damaged teenager who, in the beginning, would duck away if she saw him over the fence, and who’d shrunk back from any physical contact—even a simple handshake—had emerged, like a caterpillar from a cocoon, as this beautiful butterfly.

      He wanted to know just how she’d managed the transformation—and how deep it went. He knew Isobel in particular had worked hard to restore Alex’s self-esteem, but there’d been a fragility about the teenager that couldn’t be hidden behind dark glasses and a dreadful haircut.

      ‘As far as your father’s concerned, the operation went well, but he wasn’t in the best of health before it. Other heart problems apparently. I only know this stuff from his chart but I gather that if it hadn’t been a necessity …’

      He paused, wondering how to tell this woman he knew but didn’t know just how precarious her father’s health was.

      ‘Look, I should be through by eight and your father will still be sleeping off the anaesthetic until morning at least, so you might as well get out of here for a while,’ he said. ‘We could eat in the canteen but the food’s appalling. There’s a nice new bar and restaurant at the top of the old Royal Motel. It has a fancier name now—the motel, that is—which I can never remember. And it’s in walking distance. We could have a meal—give us time to catch up.’

      She nodded her agreement as a nurse came into the room. Will’s attention, or ninety-five per cent of it, returned to his patient as he discussed Mr Hudson’s progress and checked the results the monitor was revealing by the second.

      Alex had slipped away, for which he was truly grateful, although he felt a momentary regret he hadn’t looked at her more closely, if only to confirm his impression she’d blossomed into a startlingly beautiful woman.

      Will Kent!

      Alex stood in the little bathroom off the family waiting room of the ICU and smiled as she ran the name through her head.

      But had the Will Kent she’d known had laughing brown eyes that crinkled with smile lines at the corners, and lips that seemed to be on the verge of a smile all the time? Of course, eighteen years ago, when he’d left Port to finish his studies, his eyes probably hadn’t been crinkled, and they’d been hidden behind the dark-framed glasses, and, anyway, in the state she’d been in back then she wouldn’t have noticed anything about any man. Certainly not his lips …

      And she’d better not notice them now, she reminded herself. As she’d pointed out, Will was all grown up now, and undoubtedly married with children. In fact, throwing herself at him, hugging him, had undoubtedly embarrassed him no end, rendering him practically speechless.

      Back then he’d been the Armitages’ next-door neighbour christened Superman by the twins—or probably their parents, given his surname. Self-effacing—that was how she’d have described him—but somehow he’d always been around in that first year she’d been with the Armitages. In and out of the house, borrowing textbooks from Dave or Isobel, seemingly always there if she’d needed him. She tried to remember.

      He’d certainly helped her rescue Riain out of the tree one day, and had carried Rosi down to the doctor’s the day she’d fallen off the swing.

       Superman!

      She smiled at the memories and told herself that today, with all the emotions of her return home churning inside her, she’d probably have hugged any familiar face.

      An image of Will as he was now, dark hair touched with silver, lips stretched in a surprised smile, continued to linger in Alex’s head, making her feel hot and embarrassed and somehow ashamed all at the same time.

      Why had he suggested dinner?

      He could have talked to Alex in the visitors’ room, or his office, but a bar?

      Had a beautiful woman giving him a hug gone straight to his head?

      Or had his mother’s gentle nagging—you’ve got to start going out again some time, Will—prompted the choice?

      His mother was probably right!

      He did have to start going out again.

      Three years now—three years, eight months and five days, if he was counting—since Elise’s death, and Charlotte deserved to have a mother …

      He stared out at the lights sparkling in the darkened town beneath him and gave a huff of laughter.

      ‘That would be ironic laughter,’ he muttered to himself, remembering trying to explain irony to Alex, she pushing the twins on the swings while he’d leaned over the fence. Later, that was, after she’d got used to him being around and had actually asked him for some help with some assignment she was doing.

      ‘Definitely ironic!’

      ‘Are you talking to yourself?’

      He turned to see her, and all the physical reactions he’d had at the hospital happened again.

      ‘Never!’ he lied. ‘That would really label me a nut job.’

      Alex smiled, intensifying all the stuff going on inside his body.

      ‘You might think back to when I met you,’ she teased. ‘You were hanging upside down on the side fence, so the nut-job label was firmly in place from the beginning.’

      Will gathered the tattered remnants of his dignity.

      ‘I was being a bat!’ he reminded her. ‘Showing the twins how they hung in their trees.’

      She laughed with such frank and open delight his insides melted.

      But along with all the physical confusion came the clang of warning bells.

      They were both damaged people, besides which she was probably married, or engaged, or partnered—too beautiful to still be single—while he was no catch—single father still hurting from the loss of his wife, shying away from the very thought of love. Not that this was a date …

      ‘Are you okay?’

      ‘I guess,’ he answered the still smiling woman, although okay was a long way off.

      He was sitting at a table that had a view over the mouth of the river and up along the coast as far as a distant headland.

      The view provided the distraction he needed.

      ‘Can we see your house from here?’ he asked, looking not out to sea but up the river.

      Alex looked too, checking the scattering of houses on the far side of the river from the town—reached by ferry during its operating hours or by a long detour back around via the highway when the ferry stopped at midnight.

      ‘I think so,’ she said. ‘You see the ferry down by the wharf and the fishermen’s co-op on it—the shed-looking thing? Beyond that there’s the bit of waste land and the huge old fig tree—well, we’re two houses down from the tree, although you probably can’t see the house because they seem to have built an enormous place beside it.’

      She smiled and shrugged her shoulders.

      ‘We’re two houses down,’ she repeated. ‘It’s funny talking about “my house” when I haven’t been there for so long. Although I didn’t make it back in time to see Dad before the operation, we’d spoken on the phone a couple of times, and he’d been so upset about what had happened in the past that I promised when I came I’d stay with him, at least until he’s over the op.’

      Will smiled, brown eyes twinkling in his tanned face, and Alex immediately regretted this reunion.

      It was because he was a familiar face that she was

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