LITMIR.BIZ

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was loaded with pain. ‘But you already know this, don’t you?’

      ‘I know a bit,’ Harriet admitted. ‘I’d like to know more.’

      ‘You’d be very good.’

      ‘Would have been very good,’ Harriet corrected. ‘I was accepted to study psychology at uni a few years ago, but at the time we couldn’t afford it.’ This time Ciro did raise his eyebrows. ‘OK, Drew wasn’t getting much work and we really needed a full-time wage. But when we moved here and his work was more secure…’ She shook her head. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

      ‘So what has changed?’ Ciro asked. ‘You can’t deny this is a new chapter in your life. Why not go the whole way and do something that you really want to?’

      ‘I might,’ Harriet said tightly. ‘Just not yet.’

      But from his frown, Harriet realised he didn’t understand, just didn’t get the emotional war zone her life had been for so long now, still would be for a while yet, at least until her divorce came through. He couldn’t comprehend the battering her confidence had taken over and over, that apart from nursing every facet of her life had changed.

      ‘I want some peace,’ Harriet said finally. ‘I’m tired of unpacking boxes only to pack them up again a few months later, tired of being interviewed for a job I’ve been doing for years and starting over in yet another hospital, tired of having my mail redirected, or when the car needs a service having to find yet another new garage…’ Now she was starting to sound sorry for herself so she lightened it with a very bright smile. ‘I like Sydney,’ Harriet said firmly. ‘I love the fact that the beaches are just a stone’s throw from the city, love the ferries leaving the harbour, and the cafés and the mass of people, love the fact that at five a.m. at the end of a night shift I can go up to the top floor and watch the sunrise on a new day.’

      ‘It sounds like you’re staying!’

      ‘I am,’ Harriet said firmly, but taken aback a touch by her sudden decision. ‘I like my job, like the people I’m working with, and for the first time in years I’m going to stay put. Who knows? When the dust has settled, maybe I will go to uni and do psychology.’

      ‘Just not yet?’ Ciro ventured, and Harriet nodded.

      ‘Just not yet. Thanks for this.’ Holding up her wineglass, she chinked it with his. ‘It’s nice to have a sympathetic ear.’

      ‘Harriet, I am not here just to offer sympathy.’ Those gorgeous mocha-coloured eyes were staring directly at her. ‘I am here to spend some time with you, to get to know you. I am not very good at hiding my feelings and until I knew that you were sure your marriage was over it would not have been appropriate for me to come around for anything more than a very brief visit.’

      ‘Appropriate?’

      ‘I have watched you on the beach.’ Ciro gestured to the vast expanse below. ‘Seen the indecision in you…’

      ‘Ciro, there was no indecision, just pain.’

      ‘You needed space,’ Ciro said firmly, and Harriet had to leave it at that, but knew that the second she was alone she would go over the words he had said and see, if on replay, they were as wonderful as they sounded now, if Ciro was really saying that he wanted to spend time with her, not as a colleague, not as a neighbour, but as a woman.

      And it should surely have been the most nerve-racking evening of her life, but it wasn’t, and it had nothing to do with two glasses of wine and everything to do with this amazing, insightful man. A man who actually knew not just how to listen but what to say, too, making her laugh, regaling stories of his own. And by the time the mozzies had started making themselves known and the noise from the party on the beach became more raucous than high-spirited it seemed the most natural thing in the world to drift into the lounge to relax back on the sofa and break open the chocolate while watching what would surely now top the list as Harriet’s all-time favourite movie.

      ‘You know it’s really over when you sleep in the middle of the bed,’ Ciro said authoritatively, handing her a tissue at a particularly tragic part, because when it was someone else’s life that was in tatters it was easier to cry somehow, easier to let go of the tears and pass them off for someone else.

      ‘I already am,’ Harriet gulped, startled that he had voiced something she had already thought about. It had actually come as a pleasant surprise to find that the bed wasn’t too big without Drew—in fact, it was divine, lying in the middle, stretching like a cat as she awakened with the sun. ‘The very first day I moved in here—that night I moved to the middle.’

      ‘There’s no going back, then,’ Ciro said assuredly. ‘Only forward—at least, that is what my sisters tell me.’

      ‘You have three sisters?’ Finding her voice she resumed the earlier conversation.

      ‘Three very different sisters,’ Ciro elaborated. ‘Cara is the eldest, impossibly dreamy and with the most appalling taste in men—married, drinkers, gamblers. I tell her one day she’ll hit the jackpot and manage to incorporate all three in the same guy. Estelle is studious, swore she’d never settle down until she’d finished her PHD, but she fell in love with a fellow student and now has two daughters, and we found out last week she is expecting twins—girls,’ he added. ‘All my life I am surrounded by women. Do you know that ginger cats are always male?’

      ‘I think so,’ Harriet said, raking her memory and trying to revive this rather useless piece of information.

      ‘My mother bought one for me, supposedly to even things up—it had kittens a few months later!’

      ‘Gosh!’ Harriet blinked. No wonder he was so good with women, the poor guy was surrounded by them. ‘What about Nikki? How is she?’

      ‘She is doing great now, busy working and getting on with her life.’

      ‘What work does she do?’

      ‘She models, which is not the ideal environment for someone who is so delicate, but she seems to be coping well at the moment.’

      So good looks clearly ran in the family.

      ‘And these sisters of yours.’ Harriet took a gulp of wine, nervously broaching a subject she desperately wanted answers to while hoping to sound somehow casual. ‘When your relationships end, do they do the mercy dash with chocolate and wine and slushy movies?’

      ‘Oh, no!’ Ciro shook his head firmly.

      ‘Too proud to cry?’

      ‘No.’ Ciro shook his head again. ‘I am not one for regrets, for thinking what might have been.’ He dusted his hands together in a gesture of finality. ‘If it’s over, it’s over.’

      ‘Ouch!’

      He laughed as she flinched. ‘It is much better that way. Most of my ex-girlfriends are still friends of mine. What?’ he asked as Harriet shot him a disbelieving look. ‘You don’t believe me—but they really are!’ Ciro insisted. ‘Just because we are no longer in a relationship it doesn’t mean we cannot still be friends.’

      ‘Ciro.’ She couldn’t help but smile, a tiny sigh of sympathy escaping her lips for all his ex-girlfriends, because, as sure as eggs were eggs, one night in Ciro Delgato’s arms would render any friendship null and void. ‘I guarantee these so-called friends of yours don’t see it that way. In fact, I’d bet that these friends of yours would tumble into bed with you at a moment’s notice.’

      ‘Of course!’ He wasn’t remotely embarrassed and Harriet’s mouth dropped open at his shameless honesty. ‘So long as neither of us are in a relationship, where is the harm?’

      ‘I don’t know,’ Harriet said feebly, suddenly feeling horribly unsophisticated. ‘It just seems so…pointless, I guess. I mean you know it isn’t going to work out…’

      ‘Harriet, do you read books again?’

      ‘Sorry?’

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