LITMIR.BIZ

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have to be Brisbane. She couldn’t go back to the Harbour after confessing this lie.

      Luke had started the lie. Not her. She glanced at Luke, who glanced right back. Their eyes locked. His gaze was … almost a challenge?

       Are you about to tell the truth?

      Oh, for heaven’s sake, why should she? she thought. What right did this nosey woman have to the truth?

      Whatever, she decided. Go with the flow.

      But maybe … not lie unless she had to?

      ‘Merrylegs is my very favourite horse,’ she said, tangentially.

      ‘Merrylegs?’ Ginnie blinked.

      ‘She’s given me years of joy,’ she said and somehow, between Ginnie’s prurient interest and Luke’s bland withdrawal, she found herself remembering her first and one true love. ‘She’s beautiful. I know her so well she’s almost part of me, and I wish I could be riding her now.’

      ‘She’s on Luke’s farm?’

      ‘All my horses are on my farm,’ Luke said, sounding suddenly … wicked. ‘Even though Merrylegs is Lily’s favourite, all my horses are her horses.’

      ‘How long have you two been an item?’ Ginnie demanded.

      ‘Years,’ Luke said. ‘Like Lily said.’

      ‘How many years.’

      ‘Three?’ Luke said. ‘I think. Isn’t that right, dear?’

      ‘Have you been staying on Luke’s farm for three years?’ Ginnie was almost speechless. ‘That’s not even a year after Hannah died.’

      ‘I never met Hannah.’ Lily faced Luke’s wickedness head on. What had he called her? Dear. She lowered her voice, talking respectfully about her lover’s deceased wife. ‘Would Hannah have loved Merrylegs?’ she asked Luke. ‘Dear?’

      ‘Hannah was more a cat person,’ Luke said. The smile behind his eyes was challenging. Dangerous.

      She rose to meet it. Challenging right back.

      ‘You never talk to me about Hannah. I think you should.’ She turned back to Ginnie. ‘He never talks to me about Hannah,’ she said, sounding aggrieved. ‘I think our relationship would be better if he let it all out.’

      ‘That’s what John says,’ Ginnie managed. ‘So …’

      ‘So, farm,’ Lily said, trying hard to sound brisk when, in fact, all she wanted to do was retreat to Luke’s bed and pull pillows over her head. ‘We can pack pillows,’ she told Luke. ‘Your beautiful car might even be comfortable enough to sleep in. Mind, I’m more accustomed to the farm truck,’ she confessed to Ginnie. ‘But when in the city, act like a city girl, that’s what I say. You might like to pack some more paper bags … sweetheart.’

      ‘I guess we’d better start packing,’ Luke said faintly. ‘Darling.’

      ‘You start packing,’ Lily said tartly, long-term-lover-like. ‘I’m poorly. Ginnie, would you like to help? Maybe you could make me that toast you were offering?’

      ‘Are you offering to make us dinner?’ Luke asked, full of hope, and Ginnie backed out as if burned.

      ‘I’ll leave you to it. We’ll miss you tomorrow night. Come back better, Lily. We’ll have a lovely long chat on Monday.’

      ‘I can’t wait,’ Lily muttered as Luke closed the door behind her. ‘I just can’t wait.’

      To say the silence was loaded was an understatement. Luke closed the door carefully and then snibbed it, as if even now Ginnie might return.

      Lily backed to the closest dining room chair and sat. Whatever energy she’d had had been spent.

      ‘I’m thinking,’ she said at last, trying hard to breathe so she didn’t gasp, ‘that communication seems to be lacking. So we’re a couple. Congratulations are in order. We’ve been dating for years. We’re about to leave on a romantic weekend to some farm I’ve never heard of.’

      ‘Where you ride a horse called Merrylegs.’ He seemed just as winded as she was. ‘I believe two of us are playing this game.’

      ‘It’s not a game,’ she snapped.

      ‘I’m not laughing,’ he said, and suddenly he wasn’t. All this time he’d been holding his briefcase. Now he set it down, carefully, like it might explode.

      That’s what the atmosphere felt like, Lily thought. Loaded.

      ‘I’m feeling a wee bit trapped,’ she said, and hauled his bathrobe tighter round her.

      ‘That’s the part I don’t understand.’

      ‘What?’

      ‘The trapped bit. You’re an agency nurse. You could pack up and leave.’

      ‘If I break my four-week contract.’

      ‘I understand it’d make it hard to find another agency to take you. But there are other cities.’

      ‘I don’t have enough money to move to another city.’

      ‘Would you like to tell me why you’re in trouble?’

      ‘No,’ she said. She thought about it, thought about all the conclusions he might be jumping to, thought that maybe hiding any more conclusions wasn’t a good idea. ‘My mother’s maxed out my credit card,’ she said. ‘She’s done … well, let’s just say savings I thought were in my account no longer are. She’s taken a lover. We live in my tiny two-bedroom apartment and the walls are thin.’

      ‘Ouch.’

      ‘Her lover’s the local vicar, husband of a prominent citizen, I’m a scarlet woman by association.’

      ‘Double ouch.’

      ‘Lighthouse Cove is too small.’

      ‘I can see it might be.’ He looked at her, not so much sympathetic as interested. Doctor inspecting patient. Looking at strange symptoms. ‘So why not Adelaide? You trained there. You could get a job there.’

      ‘And my mother would be on my doorstep within days, weeping, asking for money, needing support. Or worse, walking into the ward where I’m working, weeping, asking for money, needing support. She’s done it before and she’ll do it again.’

      ‘So Sydney.’

      ‘For as long as I can manage,’ she said wearily. ‘For as long as I can get by until I need to go home and face the mess. I hadn’t counted on running into a mess myself.’ She sighed, and looked longingly at the bed. ‘I’m really very tired.’

      ‘You are,’ he said, gently this time, as if the physician had made his diagnosis and was moving to treatment phase. ‘But this apartment block is almost an extension of the hospital. We’ll be watched all weekend. The farm is best.’

      ‘I don’t want to move,’ she admitted.

      ‘It’d be better if I went to the farm and you stayed here,’ he conceded. ‘Only you’d get visitors and questions. At the farm you can sleep for three days straight. So what I suggest is that you sleep now for a couple of hours while I finish some patient notes, then I’ll tuck you into my car and you can sleep all the way to Tarrawalla.’

      ‘Tarrawalla?’

      ‘It’s where my elderly uncle lives,’ he said. ‘And the phantom Merrylegs.’ He smiled. ‘And the rest of my horses, all of which you ride like the wind.’

      That smile …

      She shouldn’t.

      Shouldn’t what? Go to his farm? Sink into that smile?

      No,

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