‘Oh, my darling girl,’ he said with the most ghastly slimy smile.
Whipping the towel about her, Ellie managed to get rid of him with a few scathing, shrilly screamed words, but she’d been sickened, horrified.
Desperate.
And the worst of it was she couldn’t get her mother to understand.
‘Harold’s lived alone for years,’ her mum had said, excusing him. ‘He’s not used to sharing a house with others. And he hasn’t done or said anything improper, Ellie. You’re just at that age where you’re sensitive about your body. It’s easy to misread these things.’
Her mother had believed what she wanted to, what she needed to.
Ellie, however, had left home for good as soon as she finished school, despite her mother’s protests and tears, giving up all thought of university. University students had long, long holidays and she would have been expected to spend too much of that time at home.
She had realised it was futile to press her mother about Harold’s creepiness—mainly because she knew how desperate her mother was to believe he was perfect. Harold was such a hotshot in their regional town. He was the mayor, for heaven’s sake, and Ellie was afraid that, if she pushed her case, she might cause the whole thing to blow up somehow and become a horrible public scandal.
So she’d headed north to Queensland, where she’d scored a job as a jillaroo on a cattle property. Over the next few years, she’d worked on several properties—a mustering season here, a calving season there. Gradually she’d acquired more and more skills.
On one property she’d joined a droving team and she’d helped to move a big mob of cattle hundreds of kilometres. She was given her own horses to ride every day. And, finally, she was living the country life she’d dreamed of, the life she’d anticipated when she was almost thirteen. Before her father died.
Whenever she phoned home or returned home for the shortest possible visits, she was barely civil to Harold. He got the message. Fortunately, he’d never stepped out of line again, but Ellie would never trust him again either.
Trust...
Thinking about all of this now, Ellie was struck by a thought so suffocating she could scarcely breathe.
Oh, my God. Is that my problem? Trust issues?
That was it, wasn’t it?
She clung to the railing, struggling for air. Her problems with Joe had nothing to do with whether or not she was attracted to him. The day they met remained the stand-alone most significant moment of her life.
She’d taken one look at Joe Madden, with his sexy blue eyes, his ruggedly cute looks, his wide-shouldered lean perfection and nicest possible smile, and she’d fallen like a stone.
But I couldn’t trust Joe.
When it came to coping with the ups and downs of a long-term marriage, she hadn’t been strong enough to deal with her disappointments. She’d lost faith in herself, lost faith in the power of love.
Ellie thought again about her father climbing a windmill and dying before he could keep his promise to her. She thought about her creepy stepfather, who’d broken her trust in a completely different way. By the time she’d married Joe...
I never really expected to be happy. Not for ever. I couldn’t trust our marriage to work. It was almost as if I expected something to go wrong.
It was such a shock to realise this now.
Too late.
Way too late.
She’d never even told Joe about her stepfather. She’d left it as a creepy, shuddery, embarrassing part of her past that she’d worked hard to bury.
But that hadn’t affected how she’d truly felt about him.
She’d loved Joe.
Despite the mixed-up and messy emotional tornado that had accompanied her fertility issues and ultimately destroyed their marriage, she’d truly loved him—even when he’d proposed their divorce and he’d told her he was leaving for the Army.
And now?
Now, she was terribly afraid that she’d never really stopped loving him. But how crazy was that when their divorce was a fait accompli?
No wonder she was tense.
Ellie thumped the railing with a frustrated fist. At the same moment, from down the veranda she heard the squeaky hinge of the French windows that led from the lounge room. Then footsteps. She stiffened, turned to see Joe. He was alone.
She drew a deep breath and braced herself. Don’t screw this up again. Behave.
‘Are you OK?’ Joe asked quietly.
‘Yes, thanks.’
He came closer and stood beside her at the railing, looking out at the soggy paddocks. ‘I’m sorry, Ellie. I’m sorry for getting stuck into you. My timing’s been lousy, coming back here at Christmas.’
She shook her head. ‘I’m making too big a deal about the whole Christmas thing.’
‘But that’s fair enough. It’s the first Christmas Jacko’s been old enough to understand.’
She sighed, felt emotionally drained. Exhausted. ‘Where’s Jacko now?’
‘In the lounge room. Still hiding the bear, I hope. Persistent little guy, isn’t he?’ Joe slid her a tentative sideways smile.
She sent a shy smile back.
Oh, if only they could continue to smile—or, at the very least, to be civilised. Joe was right. For Jacko’s sake, they had to try. For the next couple of days—actually, for the next couple of decades till Jacko was an adult, they had to keep up a semblance of friendship.
Friendship, when once they’d been lovers, husband and wife.
‘I got my knickers in a twist when you suggested I wasn’t sensitive about Jacko,’ Ellie admitted. ‘It felt unfair. He’s always been my first concern.’
‘You’ve done an amazing job with the boy. He’s a great little guy. A credit to you.’
The praise surprised her. Warmed her.
‘I don’t know how you’ve done it out here on your own,’ Joe added.
‘The nanny’s been great. But I’ll admit it hasn’t always been easy.’ She stole another quick glance at him, saw his deep brow, his wide cheekbones, his slightly crooked nose and strong shadowed jaw. She felt her breathing catch. ‘I guess this can’t be easy for you now. Coming back from the war and everything.’
When he didn’t answer, she tried again, ‘Was it bad over there?’
A telltale muscle jerked. ‘Sometimes.’
Ellie knew he’d lost soldier mates, knew he must have seen things that haunted him. But Special Forces guys hardly ever talked about where they’d been or what they’d done—certainly not with ex-wives.
‘I was one of the lucky ones,’ he said. ‘I got out of it unscathed.’
Unscathed emotionally? Ellie knew that the Army had changed its tactics, sending soldiers like Joe on shorter but more frequent tours of duty in an effort to minimise post-traumatic stress, but she was quite sure that no soldier returned from any war without some kind of damage.
I haven’t helped. This hasn’t been a very good homecoming for him.
Quickly, bravely, she said, ‘For the record, Joe, it isn’t true.’
He turned, looking at her intently. ‘What do you mean?’ His blue eyes seemed to penetrate all the way to her soul.
Her