‘I work in a television newsroom. At the moment I’m everyone’s gofer, but I’m hoping for better things.’
She shuddered as another crack of thunder tore the night but soldiered on.
‘I was born in Brisbane. My father died in an accident a few years ago, and my mother has remarried. She lives overseas at the moment. I did a BA at Queensland University, majoring in journalism. My father was a journalist, so I guess that’s where I get it from.’ She paused to consider for a moment.
She did enjoy her job, but had she inherited her father’s passion for journalism? She sometimes stopped to wonder whether it had been her admiration for her father that had moved her to pursue the same career rather than a deep, abiding feel for it. She often found herself feeling restless, and as if she’d prefer to be doing something else—but what?
Adam broke the silence and the train of her thoughts.
‘Now for the question of Mr Smith.’ He looked at her with suspicious gravity.
Bridget bit her lip. ‘There is no Mr Smith. The ring…’ She fingered the chain around her neck. ‘It’s my mother’s, but since I didn’t know you, it seemed a good idea to invent a husband.’
‘I wondered about that.’
‘Why? I mean how could you tell I was lying?’
He considered. ‘You have very revealing eyes. It also sounded like pure invention.’
Bridget blushed faintly.
He traced the outline of her chin lightly. ‘So, no romantic involvement at the moment?’
Perhaps it was the storm raging overhead, perhaps it was the reassuring warmth of his proximity, but for whatever reason Bridget found herself telling Adam things she’d not told another soul. Things to do with how she had fallen madly in love at twenty-one, how it had led to an affair—a first for her—and how it had been a disaster.
‘He changed,’ she said sadly. ‘He became possessive, and yet…’ she paused ‘…oddly critical of me. But that was probably because I didn’t—well—I didn’t seem to be very good at sex. I think a lot of that was to do with the fact that I would really rather have waited—until we’d got engaged at least.’
She heaved a heartfelt sigh and continued. ‘I—it didn’t take that long for me to discover I’d gone to bed with a man I didn’t seem to like much. Oh, he was good-looking, and fun to be with, but…’ She trailed off. ‘He became rather scary when I broke it off.’ She shrugged. ‘All of which amounts to the fact that I haven’t tried again—I don’t know why I’m telling you all this.’ She looked into Adam’s blue eyes, now thoroughly red-faced.
‘Maybe it needed to be told?’ he suggested, and stroked her hair. Creep, he thought at the same time, but didn’t say it. He did say, ‘Things could be quite different with the right man.’
Bridget looked unconvinced, but didn’t pursue it. ‘Why did I talk about it now, though?’
He stretched out his legs and pulled the one blanket around them. ‘It’s been quite a night. Fear, stress, physical exertion, highs and lows, and now an almighty electrical storm.’
It’s more than that, Bridget thought. There’s something about this man that really appeals to me. He not only makes me feel safe, he makes me feel interested in him, as if I really want to get to know him and—
She stopped her thoughts there. And what? She was very conscious of him physically, she answered herself, and she just couldn’t seem to help herself. Alive to all sorts of little things—like his hands. I love his hands, she decided suddenly. And the way his eyes can laugh, the way his hair falls in his eyes sometimes.
‘Not only that,’ he went on, and took his hand from her hair to rub his jaw ruefully, ‘what it makes you, Mrs Smith, is simply very human. We all make mistakes and some dodgy judgements.’
Bridget thought for a moment, then said, ‘I guess so.’
He grimaced at the lack of conviction in her voice. ‘But there must be more to Bridget Smith.’ He raised his voice as the thunder growled overhead. ‘Tell me about your likes and dislikes. What makes you tick?’
‘I’m very ordinary.’ She paused and cast him a suddenly mischievous little look. ‘Well, I do a lot of things fairly competently, but to date nothing outstand-ingly—although I’m living in hope that my true forte is still to make itself known.’
He laughed. ‘What about all the things you do fairly well?’
‘Let’s see. I paint—at one stage I thought I might be the next Margaret Olley, as I love painting flowers, but not so. I also like doing landscapes. I play the piano, but any hopes I would be the next Eileen Joyce were dashed early on. Mind you, I still enjoy doing both. I once thought I’d like to be a landscape gardener. My parents had a few acres and I loved pottering around the garden.’
She paused and thought. ‘And I ride—I love horses. I don’t have any of my own, although I did have a couple of ponies as a kid, and I help out at a riding school for disabled children. I seem to have a rapport with kids. Uh…I read all the time, I enjoy cooking, I enjoy being at home and pottering—oh, and I sing.’
‘Professionally?’ he queried.
She shook her head, her eyes dancing. ‘No. I did believe I might be the next Sarah Brightman, but again not so. That doesn’t stop me from singing in the shower and anywhere else I can manage it.’
‘Sing for me.’
‘Now?’
‘Why not?’
So she sang a couple of bars of ‘Memory’, from Cats, in her light, sweet soprano. When she’d finished she confessed she was mad about musicals.
‘You sound like a pretty well-rounded girl to me,’ he said, with a ghost of a smile still lurking on his lips. ‘In days gone by you would have had all the qualifications to be a genteel wife and mother.’
‘That sounds really—unexciting,’ she said with a gurgle of laughter. ‘But it’s probably in line with what one of my teachers told me. She said to me, “You’re not going to set the world on fire academically, Bridget, but you are a thoroughly nice girl.”’ She looked comically heavenwards. ‘Unexciting, or what?’
‘Oh, I don’t know.’ He grinned, and dropped a kiss on her forehead. ‘It’s nice to be nice, and I think you are nice.’
Bridget smiled back at him, unexpectedly warmed. Then a twinkle of humour lit her eyes. ‘I showed her I wasn’t such a disaster academically when I got to uni, and I got honours in a couple of subjects, but enough about me—tell me about you?’
His chiselled lips twisted. ‘I wouldn’t know where to begin.’
‘Well, how old are you and where were you born? What do you do? That kind of thing.’
‘I’m thirty-one—whereas you would be…twenty-two?’
‘Twenty-three.’
‘Twenty-three,’ he repeated. ‘I was born in Sydney. I’ve done many things. I’m also pretty keen on horses, but—’ he raised his eyebrows ‘—since you ask, I’m something of a rolling stone.’
‘You mean—no ties?’ she hazarded.
‘No ties,’ he agreed.
‘Did you get your fingers burnt by a woman once?’
For some reason that quiet question, uttered with a mix of wisdom