‘AFTER you.’
Alison Carter gave brief thanks as someone stepped aside and she shuffled onto the bus, coffee in hand, and took a seat in her usual spot, halfway down, to the left of the bus and next to the window.
Morning was just peeking in and the sky was full of purples and oranges as the doors hissed closed and the bus made its slow way up the hill. Even though she’d bought a newspaper, till the bus turned the corner Alison did as she always did and stared out at the glorious view—to the energetic joggers on the foreshore, the walkers on the beach, the swimmers in the ocean and out beyond, to where the patient surfers bobbed quietly, waiting for the next good wave.
It was a slice of heaven.
A view that reminded Alison, because sometimes she needed reminding, that she lived in surely the most beautiful part of the world, that she had absolutely nothing to complain about. It was an internal pep talk that she delivered to herself quite often when the travel bug stung—yes, there were other beaches, other worlds to explore, but here was where she belonged and, if you had to be stuck somewhere, then Coogee was a very nice place to be…
Stuck.
Alison closed her eyes for just a second, leant her temple against the window and told herself to stop using that word.
Having recently read an article on positive thinking and the harm of negative self-talk and thoughts, she was resolutely reframing and rephrasing, but she was finding it to be an almost full-time job.
It was a very nice place to be, Alison told herself.
To just be!
As the bus took on its next load of passengers, then commenced its slow turn into the hilly street that would take them from Coogee to Eastern Beaches Hospital where she worked, Alison turned away to concentrate on her newspaper.
Then she saw him.
Craning his neck for a final glimpse of the beach too, it was, Alison was sure, the man who had let her on the bus before himself. The flash of blond hair and pale shirt that she’d glimpsed as she’d turned and briefly thanked him actually belonged to a man more beautiful than any she had ever seen and only then did she recall his English accent, and she was sure, quite sure, that the man she was looking at was the Nick Roberts.
Despite having been on days off from her job as an accident and emergency nurse, Alison had heard all about him from her friends and colleagues. Ellie had told her all about the gorgeous, completely gorgeous new locum registrar, who was filling in in Emergency while the senior registrar, Cort Mason, took some long overdue extended leave. Even Moira had sent her two texts worth of information about the nice surprise she’d found on her late shift one afternoon, warning her that he had to be seen to be believed.
Presuming that it was him, thanks to the hospital grapevine, and because nurses loved to gossip, Alison knew rather a lot about the handsome stranger on her bus. He had been travelling for six months and was doing a two-month stint in Sydney, getting some money together to spend on his prolonged journey home, first to New Zealand and then home to the UK via Asia, and, Ellie had said droolingly, while he was in Sydney, he was staying in Coogee.
It probably wasn’t him, Alison told herself. Coogee was hardly the outback, there were loads of gorgeous men, loads of travellers, yet she was quite sure that it was him, because this man had to be seen to be believed.
Taller than most, he was sitting on a side seat, doing the crossword in the newspaper, and he kept forgetting to tuck his legs in, having to move them every time someone got on or got off. He had on dark grey, linen trousers and a paler grey shirt. And, yes, there were loads of Englishmen staying in Coogee—he could be anyone, but holidaymakers and travellers weren’t usually on the two-minutes-past-six bus. It was, Alison knew, after nearly three years of taking this very route, a fairly regular lot she joined on the bus each morning.
Of course he caught her looking and he gave her a very nice smile, an open, possibly even flirting smile, and all it served to do was annoy Alison as she pulled her eyes away and back to her newspaper. In fact, she wanted to tell him that she’d been looking, not because he was drop dead gorgeous but because she thought she knew who he was.
And if she was right, then he’d be the last person she’d be interested in.
She’d heard all about him from her friends—the string of broken hearts he had left behind on his travels and daredevil attitude in his quest for adventure.
So, instead of thinking about him, Alison, as always, read her horoscope, which was too cryptic for such an early hour, so she turned, as she always did on a Friday, to the travel section, only the sting she so regularly felt became just a touch more inflamed as she read that airfares had come down dramatically. Even if it was too early for cryptic horoscopes the arithmetic was easy—her meticulous savings, combined with the money her father had left her, were enough for a tiny deposit on an even tinier flat or a round-the-world trip and a year or two spent following her heart.
Alison knew what her father would have chosen.
But she knew too what it would do to her mother.
She glanced up again to the man she thought was Nick Roberts. He had given up on his crossword and sat dozing now, and Alison stared, annoyed with a stranger who had been nothing but polite, jealous of a man she had never even met—because if this was Nick Roberts, then he was living her dream.
Maybe he felt her watching, because green eyes suddenly opened and met hers. He had caught her looking again and smiled. Embarrassed, Alison stood as her bus stop approached, and it was either be extremely rude or return his smile as she walked past.
‘Morning,’ Alison said, and then to show him she said morning and smiled at everyone, she said it to someone else who caught her eye as she moved down the bus.
And it had to be him because he was standing up too and this was the hospital bus stop and there certainly couldn’t be two people as lovely as him working there.
They probably weren’t, but Alison felt as if his eyes were on her as she walked through the car park and towards Emergency, and she was rather relieved when her friend and colleague Ellie caught up with her.
‘Nice days off?’ Ellie asked. ‘Any luck with the flat-hunt?’
‘None,’ Alison admitted. ‘Well, there was one flat that I could just about afford but it needs a kitchen.’
‘You could live without a nice kitchen for a while,’ Ellie pointed out.
‘There’s a hole in the side wall where the kitchen burnt down.’ Alison managed a wry laugh as she recalled the viewing, the initial optimism as she’d walked through the small but liveable lounge, and then the sheer frustration as the renovator’s delight that she’d thought she had found had turned out to be uninhabitable. ‘It’s impossible…’ Alison carried on, but she’d lost her audience because Dr Long Legs had caught up, and Ellie, who never missed an opportunity to flirt, called over to him and he fell in step beside them.
‘This is Alison. Alison, this is Nick,’ Ellie said, and none-too-discreetly gave her friend a nudge that said he was the Nick. ‘He’s with us for a couple of months.’
‘Hi, Nick,’ Alison said, and then to salvage herself, she gave him a smile. ‘We met on the bus.’
‘We did.’
‘Anyone new tends to stand out—it’s a pretty regular lot on the six a.m.,’