LITMIR.BIZ

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of her above-knee, cargo-style pants were slender, her collar bones visible through the V-opening of her modest T-shirt were like coat hangers.

      ‘You’ve got very thin.’

      She shrugged again. ‘Yes.’ Tess ate as a matter of survival. Her pleasure in it had been sucked away with all the other things that had once brought her joy.

      He regarded her for a moment. She was still a striking woman despite the angles. And the uber-short hairstyle. She’d cut it some time in that first year after they’d separated. She’d once had long white-blonde hair that had flowed down her back and formed a perfect curtain around them when they’d been making love. He’d spent hours stroking it, wrapping it around his hands and watching the light turn it incandescent as it had slowly sifted through his fingers.

      It was darker blonde now, more honey than snow—a direct consequence of moving far away from the sunshine of Brisbane to the drizzly English countryside. It was cropped closely to her head, the back and sides razored severely in. The slightly longer locks on top were brushed over from a side parting, blending in with the jagged edges.

      His sister had called it minimalist. He’d preferred the term butchered.

      It did, however, draw attention to her amber eyes. They sat large in her spare, make-up-less face, dominating prominent cheekbones that fell away to catwalk-model hollows. They looked at him now, shadows playing in their sherry depths.

      Her composure reached across the space between them and squeezed his gut hard. She projected calm detachment but he knew her well enough, despite their time apart, to see beyond. There was a fragility about her he’d have not thought possible a decade ago.

      The impact of it rattled the shackles around his heart.

      Tess weathered his probing gaze, waiting for him to say something more. Finally she could bear the silence no longer. She cleared her throat. ‘I have to go.’

      Fletch’s gaze was drawn to her mouth. Her wide, full lips were devoid of any cosmetic enhancement, just as he remembered them. The same mouth he must have kissed a thousand times. That had travelled over every inch of his body. The same mouth that had desperately tried to breathe life into Ryan, that had begged a God she’d never believed in to spare their son.

      Tess took a step towards her car. ‘I have to go,’ she repeated.

      Fletch blocked her path, gently snagging her wrist. ‘Could we talk?’

      Tessa recoiled from his hold as if she’d been zapped, crossing her arms across her chest. ‘There’s nothing to talk about.’

      ‘It’s been nine years, Tess. You think we have nothing to say to each other?’

      Tess bit her lip. Nothing that hadn’t been said already—ad nauseam.

      Fletch glanced at her white-knuckled grip as her fingernails dug into the flesh of her bare biceps. Her wedding ring, his grandmother’s ring, snagged his attention. ‘You still wear your wedding ring.’

      Tess, surprised by the sudden direction the conversation had taken, looked down at it. The rose-gold band with its engraved floral pattern, thinned with age and wear, hung loosely on her finger, only her knuckle preventing it from sliding off. She absently twisted it around with her thumb a few times before returning her attention to him.

      ‘Yes.’ She wasn’t going to tell him it was her deterrent against unwanted advances from men. She glanced at his bare left hand. ‘You don’t.’

      Fletcher glanced at his hand. It had taken a year after the divorce to take it off yet sometimes he was still surprised by its absence. The white tan line that had remained after he’d removed it had long since faded.

      ‘No.’ It had got to the stage where he hadn’t been able to bear the memories it had evoked.

      Tess nodded. What had she expected? That he would choose to hide behind his as she had hers? That grief would torpedo his libido as it had hers?

      Tess dropped her arms to her sides. ‘I really have to go.’

      Fletch held up his hands. ‘I just need a minute, please.’

      She felt exasperation bubble in her chest. In less than twenty-four hours she’d be back on a plane heading to London. The same as last year. The same as the last nine years. Why had he chosen to complicate things now?

      ‘What do you want, Fletch?’ What could he possibly want to say to her after all this time? After all these years of silence? Silence they’d both agreed on despite his lapses early in their separation.

      Fletch blinked as her familiar name for him finally slipped from her lips to claw at his gut. ‘It’s my mother … she’s unwell. She’s been asking for you.’

      Tess felt her stomach drop as concern for her ex-mother-in-law caused her heart to leap in her chest. Fletch looked so grim. ‘Is she …? What’s wrong with her? What happened?’

      ‘She has Alzheimer’s.’

      Tessa gasped, her hand coming up to cover her mouth. ‘Oh, Fletch …’ She took a step towards him, their baggage momentarily forgotten, her other hand reaching for him.

      ‘That’s terrible.’ Her hand settled against his arm, her fingers on the sleeve of his business shirt, her palm against the corded muscles of his tanned forearm. ‘Is it … Is she bad?’

      Jean King was one of the sharpest women Tess had ever met. She was funny, witty, insightful and supersmart. Tess’s mother had died when she’d been eight and Jean had filled a very deep void. They’d been close right from the get-go and Jean had been her anchor—their anchor—in the dreadful months that had followed Ryan’s death. Even when she and Fletch had separated and then divorced, Jean had been there for her.

      Fletch nodded. ‘She’s deteriorated in the last couple of months.’

      ‘When … How long has she had it for?’

      Tess had dropped in on Jean on her yearly pilgrimage home those first two years after she’d moved to the UK. But it had been too hard on both of them. Jean had wanted to talk about Ryan and Tess hadn’t been able to bear it. So she’d stopped going.

      Fletch, aware of her nearness, of her faint passionfruit fragrance, of her hand on his arm, waged a war within himself. Tess looked as devastated as he felt and it was as if the intervening years had never happened. As if he could walk right into her arms and seek the solace he so desperately craved.

      It was a dangerous illusion.

      He couldn’t hope to execute what he’d come here for if he let emotion take over. He just hadn’t been prepared for how hard it would be, seeing her again, talking to her again. He’d foolishly thought it would be easy.

      Well … easier.

      He gave himself a mental shake and rubbed the back of his neck. ‘She was first diagnosed five years ago. She’s been living with Trish for the last two years.’

      ‘Five years?’ she gasped. Tess couldn’t even begin to comprehend a world where Jean King was anything less than her larger-than-life self. ‘Why … why didn’t you tell me?’

      Fletch raised an eyebrow. ‘Seriously, Tess? I rang you practically every day for a year after you went to England…. You made it pretty clear that no correspondence would be entered into. Anyway, what were you going to do?’ he asked, surprised at the bitterness in his tone. ‘Come home?’

      Tess bit her lip. He was right. She had been ruthless with her no-contact request. ‘I’m sorry …’

      She searched his silvery-green gaze and saw apprehension and worry and for one crazy moment almost took another step forward to embrace him. But a decade of denial slammed the door shut and she dropped her hand from his arm, shocked at the strength of the impulse.

      She shook her head. ‘It’s just so wrong. Your mum has always been as fit as a fiddle …’

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