LITMIR.BIZ

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OK.

      But she glanced sideways at his profile in the moonlight. The lean, angular features of a strongly boned face. The crinkles around his eyes where years of laughter had left their mark. And pain. He’d never admit it but you didn’t suffer the type of injury he’d endured without pain.

      She loved the way his hair crinkled at the roots and then became wavy—just a little. She loved the silver in it. Premature grey was so damned sexy in a male…

      Sexy. See, there was the thing. Charles didn’t see himself as sexy so neither should she. She was right to think of his paraplegia as her security. She had to keep thinking of him as disabled, because if she kept thinking of him as sexy this marriage of convenience would never work. She ought to run rather than risk it.

      But she was tired of running. She wanted a home. A home, a husband, a daughter.

      Charles.

      If Kelvin found out, he’d kill them all.

      Was she being paranoid? The logical part of her said yes. The part of her that had been controlled by Kelvin said she wasn’t being paranoid at all.

      ‘What are you thinking?’ he asked, his voice a little strained. Maybe he was finding this as hard as she was.

      ‘That maybe it’s good for you that you’re going to Wallaby Island tomorrow,’ she said, and for the life of her she couldn’t stop her voice from sounding faintly waspish. ‘This place is going to be awash with gossip, and you and Lily will have escaped.’

      ‘Just snap their noses off when they ask to see your ring,’ he said. ‘That’ll sort them out.’

      ‘You think I’m…prickly.’

      ‘I know you’re prickly.’

      ‘Charles, why do you want to marry me?’ she burst out. ‘I’m plain and I’m bossy and I’m old.’

      ‘Now, that,’ Charles said solemnly, ‘is ridiculous.’

      ‘Is it?’

      ‘So why do you want to marry me?’ he demanded. ‘I’m in a wheelchair.’

      ‘That’s just as ridiculous.’

      ‘You don’t think you want to marry me because I’m in a wheelchair?’

      ‘Because I feel sorry for you?’ she muttered. ‘Fat chance.’

      ‘You don’t feel sorry for me?’

      ‘Anyone feeling sorry for you gets their heads bitten off.’

      ‘So you’re scared of me.’

      ‘I’m not,’ she said, and then decided to be honest. ‘Or not very much.’

      ‘So let me get this straight,’ he said slowly. ‘You’re thinking you’re plain and bossy and old, you’re scared of me but you’ve decided to marry me anyway.’

      ‘It does sound dumb,’ she admitted.

      ‘Yeah,’ he agreed. ‘With all the romance in the air around Croc Creek, the place practically sizzles.’

      ‘It’s just as well it doesn’t sizzle near us, then.’

      ‘Not even a bit?’

      ‘Of course not. I mean, look at us. We’ve discussed this sensibly. We’ve bought an engagement ring. We haven’t even kissed.’

      ‘I kissed your hand.’

      ‘You did,’ she said. ‘Um…yeah. Very nice it was, too.’

      ‘You want to be kissed?’

      ‘No!’

      ‘We ought to,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘I mean…we do intend to make a marriage out of it. We could just try.’

      ‘Charles, don’t.’

      ‘Because you’re plain and old and bossy?’

      ‘No, because…’

      ‘Because I’m in a wheelchair?’

      ‘No!’

      ‘Then why?’ he demanded, and there was suddenly frustration in his voice. ‘Why the hell not?’

      ‘Because we don’t…’

      ‘Deserve it?’ He glanced over at her. She was staring straight into the night, trying to figure out what to say. What to do. She was fingering her engagement ring like it was burning.

      ‘Jill, don’t look like that.’

      ‘Like what?’

      ‘Hell,’ he said again, and before she knew what he intended he’d steered the car onto the verge. They were at the foot of the bridge beside Crocodile Creek. There was a sloping sandbank running down to the water.

      In other circumstances a romantic couple might get out and wander down to the water’s edge to admire the moonbeams glimmering over the water’s dark surface.

      Yeah, in other circumstances a couple might get taken by a crocodile. Getting out here was for fools.

      Stopping here was for fools.

      ‘Jill, I’m not marrying any woman who’s afraid of me,’ Charles said steadily into the darkness.

      ‘I’m not…’

      ‘Look at me and say it.’

      She turned and looked at him. He gazed steadily back, serious, questioning.

      She knew this man. She’d worked with him for years. He was the best doctor in Crocodile Creek.

      He loved Lily. He was doing this to give her a daughter.

      ‘I’m not afraid of you,’ she said, and it was true. She trusted him. She knew it at every logical level. It was only the thought of marriage that had her terrified.

      But this was Charles. Charles!

      ‘It’ll be OK,’ Charles said softly, and he caught her hands and tugged her toward him. ‘Jill, I don’t think you’re plain or bossy or old.’ Then he smiled, that crinkly, crooked smile that transformed his face. The smile she loved. ‘OK, maybe bossy,’ he conceded. ‘But bossy’s good for a director of nursing. Maybe bossy’s even good for a mum, and that’s what you’re going to be. It’ll be fine. It might even be fantastic. Let’s give it our best shot, eh?’

      And he tugged her close—and he kissed her.

      She hadn’t been kissed for how long?

      Years and years and years. Her kissing skills had lain dormant, forgotten. Buried.

      But not dead.

      She’d last kissed with passion when she’d been a teenager. She’d forgotten…or she’d never known…

      Strong, warm hands holding her face, centring her so he could find her mouth. Lips meeting lips. Warmth meeting warmth.

      Not warmth. Fire.

      That was what it felt like. A rush of heat so intense that it sent shock waves jolting through her body. She felt her lips open, she felt his mouth merge with hers…

      It was like moving into another dimension.

      Her hands lifted involuntarily, her fingers raking his hair, firming their link. Not that there was a need for such firming. She couldn’t back away from this.

      This magic.

      It was a feeling so intense it seemed she was almost out of her body. Transformed into something she’d never been, or if she had she’d long forgotten. A girl, a woman who could melt with pure desire.

      For just a moment she let herself fall. She let herself be swept away, feeling how she could feel if she were a girl again and life was before

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