Yes, she was home.
All the pain of long ago hadn’t damaged the sense that this was where she belonged—maybe not for ever, or even for very long—heaven knew what the future held—but for now it was enough.
Not quite enough to heal the pain of the past or the loss of the man she’d come home to make peace with—only time would do that—but here she could handle it, cope with it, do whatever had to be done.
Finishing her coffee, she walked back into the kitchen, surprised to find a note she hadn’t noticed earlier, although it was propped in a prominent spot on the sill of the window looking out over the deck.
Thank you for coming, Alexandra. I hope with all my heart you will stay here at the house. Bacon and eggs in fridge, fruit and veg in the bottom drawers, and meat in the freezer.
Later we’ll talk but for now it is enough to know that you are here.
Please forgive me.
Love, Dad.
Alex smoothed the paper, willing away the tears, then held it to her cheek as if she could feel her father’s touch in it.
A noise out the front—on the road side of the house—turned her in that direction. Buddy was still on the veranda railing, giving cheek to the gulls and oystercatchers on the mudflats of the river.
The noise was barely there—someone trying to be quiet—but surely not a burglar at this time of the morning.
She made her way to the front room and peered through the curtains. A dark maroon SUV was parked outside, the driver’s side door open. Had Will’s car been maroon?
But why would he be sneaking around outside her house at the crack of dawn?
One way to find out. She walked down the hall and opened the door, and there he was, as large as life.
‘You shouldn’t open a door like that—you should have a locked screen or a spyhole in the door.’
Alex laughed, and hoped it was because of his lecturing tone, not because she was glad to see him.
‘I brought your luggage from the hospital and the forms you’ll need to fill in. Apparently your father had left instructions for his body to go to the university. It was with his health directive and a note from the university telling you whom to contact. I was going to leave the papers with the baggage—I thought you’d still be sleeping.’
‘When I’ve got a bird who’s better than any alarm clock?’ Alex complained, as Buddy swooped back from the deck to inspect the visitor.
‘He’s obviously disappointed I’m not Bruce,’ Will said, holding out his hand towards the bird, who eyed him cautiously for a moment before condescending to jump onto Will’s forearm.
Alex watched the little scene, curiously unsettled by it, not just Buddy on Will’s arm, but Will being here at all. But she could hardly leave him standing on the doorstep with her luggage.
Yet asking him in seemed … not dangerous—it couldn’t possibly be dangerous as this was Will …
‘He must be missing Dad,’ she said, mainly to avoid a decision. Buddy had walked up Will’s arm and was perched on his shoulder, nibbling gently at his earlobe. ‘He’s usually very shy with strangers.’
Two o’clock in the morning—that’s when Will had reached the decision to collect Alex’s luggage from the hospital and see what he could do as far as the paperwork was concerned. If he went early, he’d decided, she would probably still be asleep and he could leave the lot in the front porch.
That way he’d avoid seeing Alex, and as images of her and replays of their evening had already kept him awake for hours, he’d come to the realisation that the less he saw of her the better.
At least until he’d sorted out a few things in his mind and body. His body’s reaction to her was understandable enough, she was a beautiful woman, but the voice in his head that kept whispering ‘hurt’ and ‘vulnerable’ and other warning words was a different matter.
He’d already worked out, at least a year ago, that when he did find a mother for Charlotte, it would be a different kind of marriage. Two mature people finding companionship and sexual satisfaction and, yes, love of a kind, but not love love.
Love love hurt too much when you lost it—devastated and destroyed you. There was no way he could go through that again—and Alex, with the pain of her past, deserved better than some lukewarm version of the real thing.
So now he was standing at her front door, a galah on his head, feeling like an absolute galoot.
‘Thank you so much,’ Alex said, and he felt a stab of disappointment, sure he was about to be dismissed. Not that he’d expected to be invited in—hadn’t expected her to be up—but, seeing her in too-small, pink, floral pyjamas, he really didn’t want to go.
‘Have you had breakfast?’ she asked.
Hope rose again.
‘No, Charlotte’s stayed over with Mum because I’m on call this weekend so I thought I’d drop this stuff off early so you’d have it when you woke up. Thought it would save you dashing over to the hospital to get some clothes to wear.’
She smiled and the day seemed brighter, and while his head might be calling him all kinds of a fool, his heart swelled just a little in his chest and beat a little faster.
Attraction, that’s all it was—physical attraction after too long a celibacy. But knowing that didn’t stop him carrying her suitcases inside, the bird now flying in front of him as if to show him the way.
Alex led the way up to her bedroom, then, aware of how girlish it still looked—her bedroom at sixteen—she hesitated.
‘Just leave them here in the hall, I’ll sort them out from there. Dad left a note about food in the fridge and I was about to cook a hearty breakfast before facing whatever lay ahead.’
She turned towards him.
‘Now it seems you’ve handled most of what lay immediately ahead, so the least I can do is feed you.’
She looked worried, puzzled, uncertain—exactly the way Will felt—but she recovered first, offering a rueful smile as she said, ‘It’s weird, isn’t it, meeting again like this?’
Weird didn’t begin to sum it up! Although why, he couldn’t fathom …
‘Go and sit on the deck,’ she told him when they reached the kitchen, and he saw the majestic sweep of the river through the windows. ‘Bacon and eggs okay? And I’ve coffee made if you’d like a cup while you wait.’
To Alex’s relief, Will accepted a cup of coffee and headed out onto the deck, lessening, though not by much, the tension in her nerves. She was reasonably certain the attraction she was feeling towards him was nothing more than his familiarity. Coming home had been like landing in another life, and he was a familiar figure to cling to while she found her way around.
Not that she could cling to Will.
It had been more than three years since his wife had died and even though he’d said he’d got out of the dating habit, there had to have been other women in his life—or another special woman.
And, anyway, it felt wrong, this attraction to him. If he was looking for a woman he’d be thinking in terms of a mother for Charlotte—someone stable and committed to both him and his daughter.
And given the mess she’d made of relationships in the past, she’d hardly qualify for either role.
The bacon was sizzling and she pushed it to one side of the pan and added eggs.
‘How do you like your eggs?’ she called through the window.
‘Sunny side up,’ he replied, and the