LITMIR.BIZ

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about to let any of it go to her head.

      ‘I prefer retro myself,’ she said. ‘I have a shiny red Alpha Spider. It’s twenty years old but still looks amazing and runs like a dream.’

      ‘Well, now, I’m gonna have to go for a spin in that some time.’

      ‘I’m sure it can be arranged,’ Callie said.

      There was another minute’s silence as Cade negotiated some traffic. When he’d turned onto the main road he flicked her a glance. ‘So, anything I need to know?’

      Callie startled at the question, her pulse speeding up as she thought about all the things no one knew. And never would.

      She understood he didn’t want to put his foot in it on their ‘date’ but there were some things that were best left in the past. And that included her disastrous marriage. Her mother, who was still deeply mortified by the divorce all these years later, certainly wouldn’t be bringing it up.

      ‘No.’

      Cade kept his eyes on the road. ‘Well, how about the basics? Like where you’re from? At The beach you said you were from a small country town.’

      Callie nodded, her heart rate settling. The basics she could cope with. ‘Yes. Broken Hill. It’s in far western New South Wales, about a ten-hour drive from Sydney.’

      ‘That’s a mining town, isn’t it? That’s where BHP originated?’

      Callie nodded, impressed by his knowledge. Although Cade looked like someone who knew the stock market and BHP shares were as blue ribbon as they came. ‘Yes. That’s right.’

      ‘So your dad…He’s a miner?’

      ‘Yep. As was his dad before him and his before him. As are my three older brothers.’

      Three brothers? That certainly explained why she got on so well with her male colleagues—but Cade would have bet that Callie was an only child. There was a distance she put around herself that he understood. Alex had always had it. ‘And your mother?’

      Callie thought about all the things she wanted to say about her mother but wouldn’t. She looked out the window. ‘She’s a housewife.’

      Cade thought he heard disapproval. He approached his next query gently. ‘If you don’t mind an observation,’ he said, pausing as he searched for the right way to say what he needed to say. ‘I get the impression that you and your mother don’t really…get on? Is there something I should know there?’

      Callie almost laughed at the understatement but she felt too brittle. Like she might just snap in two if she let even the smallest laugh pass her lips.

      ‘No. It’s fine,’ she said, turning her head to look at him. ‘We get on. I love her. I love them both.’

      ‘Okay…’

      Callie knew from Alex that Cade’s childhood hadn’t exactly been a picnic, so she felt she was being trivial even talking about the topic. She’d had a family who loved her, a roof over her head, food in her stomach and a small-town network that looked after their own.

      Much more than Cade and Alex had ever known.

      ‘They just weren’t very encouraging or supportive of my…choices, that’s all. They never said to me, “Girl, you’ve got a brain in your head, you need to go to university”. They wanted me to stay in Broken Hill. Get married. Have children.’

      All the things she’d wanted, too. Wanted with all the zeal and passion of a silly seventeen-year-old desperately in love with her high-school sweetheart.

      But nothing had ever prepared her for what had happened after the big white wedding. She’d never known her coveted white picket fence could become a lonely prison, trapping her inside, too confused and inexperienced to know how to fix it.

      ‘So…you left to do medicine and that caused a rift?’

      Callie almost laughed out loud at the abbreviated version of the worst couple years of her life. ‘Yes,’ she said, as she turned her head to look out the window again.

      Her brevity spoke volumes and Cade didn’t have to be psychic to know that Callie didn’t want to talk about it. Something he understood intimately. But he also understood family breakdown and estrangement, and from what little she’d told him she didn’t have a lot to complain about.

      ‘They must be proud of you, though,’ he probed. What he’d have given to have heard his father say, I’m proud of you.

      ‘They are, I guess, in their own way. They just…don’t understand me.’

      Irritation spiked in Cade’s bloodstream. Having grown up in a completely dysfunctional household himself, he didn’t think Callie realised how lucky she was to have not just two parents who loved her but the support of an entire community. And if this had been a real date he’d have shut his mouth and thought of the pay-off at the end of the night.

      But as this night wasn’t going to end up between the sheets maybe it wouldn’t hurt for Callie to have a reality check. ‘Some people would say you’ve had it pretty good.’

      Callie looked back at the terse note in his voice, which made his accent clipped. His profile was hostile, his jaw set into a rigid line. ‘I’m sorry, Cade,’ she said, reaching her hand out and placing it on his forearm. Even it felt tense beneath her fingers. ‘I know things were…rough for you growing up. I do know how good I had it.’ She gave him a rueful smile. ‘Just ignore my whiny little princess act.’

      Cade looked briefly down at her hand, warm on his arm. She knew things were rough? What exactly had Alex told her? Alex, who was even more tight-lipped about their past than he was.

      Just how close had his brother been to Callie?

      ‘There it is,’ she said, yanking him back from the hiss and bubble of troubling questions that swirled in his brain. She removed her hand and pointed to the beachside restaurant and Cade flicked on the indicator and turned into the car park.

      Callie was nervous as she walked into the restaurant. Apart from semi-regular phone calls, it had been three years since she’d seen her parents. She’d gone back to Broken Hill for Christmas and had stuck out like a sore thumb next to her blissfully married brothers with their perfect wives and multiple children.

      It had driven her nuts that she was a highly successful neonatal specialist, at the top of her field, but somehow she’d felt like the family failure. The black sheep. And the ‘when are you going to get married and have some kids of your own?’ questions just hadn’t stopped. Seriously—was it that wrong not to want to be a baby machine?

      Her parents hadn’t arrived yet and a waiter showed them to a table set against the massive floor-to-ceiling windows. A waiter who’d smiled very appreciatively at Callie after giving her a rather thorough once-over. Callie smiled back. She’d deliberately worn clothes that said ‘I’m a sexually confident woman’ because it was important for her to project that. God knew, a few hours in the company of her parents would certainly suck her back to a time when She hadn’t been.

      A dark, painful time.

      So she needed that. She needed the waiter flirting with her. And the two guys at the bar checking out her butt. Cade sure as hell wasn’t interested and tonight she needed to know she was attractive to men, that she was desired.

      Because her parents were about to remind her of a time when she hadn’t been, and that always messed with her carefully constructed control.

      Callie ordered a glass of red wine and Cade a light beer, which were promptly delivered by another waiter who looked at her with invitation in his eyes. Aware that Cade was watching, she let her gaze linger on the twenty-something for a moment before she turned to stare out the window. She took her first fortifying sip. Between the alcohol and sufficient male adoration she figured she could get through the evening.

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