Only, of course, she couldn’t hit him. Somehow she had to get herself under control. She hiccuped on a sob and that made her angrier still because she didn’t cry, she never cried, and she knew she was being irrational, it was just…it was just…
The last few days had been crazy. She’d spent her whole life in one small community, closeted, cared for. The move here from Adelaide might seem small to some, but for Zoe it was the breaking of chains that had been with her since childhood.
It was the right thing to do, to move on, but, still, the new job, the new workplace, the constant calls from her parents—and from Dean, who still couldn’t understand why she’d left—were undermining her determination and making her feel bleak with homesickness.
But she would not give in to Dean. ‘You’ll come to your senses, Zoe, I know you will. Have your fling but come home soon. All we want to do is look after you.’
Aaagh!
She did not want to go home. She did not want to be looked after.
But neither did she want to yell at this stranger or stand in a theatre gown covering a bra and jeans, looking disgusting and feeling tears well in her eyes and rage overwhelm her, and know that somehow she had to get back into the hospital apartments, past strangers. Plus she’d intended to buy milk on the way home and…and…
And she would do this.
She fumbled under her gown to fetch her car keys. She had to lift the thing but what the heck, this guy had seen her at her worst anyway. She grabbed her car keys from her jeans pocket but Sam lifted them from her hand before she could take a step towards the car.
‘We go in my car,’ he said in a voice that said he was talking her down, doctor approaching lunatic, and she took a step back at that.
‘I’m not crazy. I might have yelled too much but you deserve it.’
‘You think I don’t know it? I love Bonnie,’ he said. ‘I deserve everything you throw at me and more, apart from the accusation that I could just buy another dog because I never could. I am deeply, deeply sorry for what happened. The fact that Bonnie has been watching me surf since she was a pup twelve years ago doesn’t mean it’s okay now. The fact that it’s a secluded beach and the guys in the buggy were there illegally doesn’t mean it’s okay either. Years ago Bonnie would have watched the whole beach. Tonight she just watched me and she paid the price. Zoe, you’re upset and you have every right to be but I can’t let you go home alone.’
‘You can’t stop me. It’s my car. Get out of the way.’
‘Zoe, be sensible. Get in the car, there’s a good girl…’
He sounded just like Dean—and she smacked him.
She’d never smacked a man in her life.
She’d never smacked anyone in her life. Or anything. Even in the worst of the bleak days, when the first transplant had failed, when she’d heard the doctors telling her parents to prepare for the worst, she’d hung in there, she’d stayed in control, she hadn’t cried, she hadn’t kicked the wall, she hadn’t lashed out at anything.
Not because she hadn’t wanted to but it had always seemed that if she did, if she let go of her relentless control, she’d never get it back. She’d drop into a black and terrifying chasm. She was far better gripping her nails into her palms until they bled and smiling at her parents and pretending she hadn’t heard, that things were normal, that life was fine.
And here, now, the first week of her new life, standing in the dusk in a veterinary surgeon’s car park, with a doctor from the hospital where she wanted to start her new life…
She’d hit him.
The chasm was there, and she was falling.
She stared at him in horror. The yelling had stopped. There was nothing left in her and she couldn’t say a word.
His face stung where her hand had swiped him in an open-palmed slap. The sound of the slap seemed to echo in the still night.
She was staring at him like the hounds of hell were after her.
It didn’t take a genius to know this woman didn’t normally slap people. Neither did it take a genius to know she was on some sort of precipice. She was teetering on the edge of hysteria. She was hauling herself back, but she was terrified she wasn’t going to make it.
What did you do with a woman who’d just slapped you? Walk away, reacting as he’d been taught all his life to react to people who were out of control?
Her eyes were huge in her white face. She was dressed in an oversized theatre gown and blood-splattered jeans and she looked like something out of a war zone.
And he could tell that there were things in this woman’s life that lay behind even the appalling events of the last few hours.
She’d hit him and she was looking at him as if she’d shot him. In his private life he avoided emotional contact like the plague. But with this woman…What was it about her?
Walk away? No.
He took her hands in his and he tugged her forward. He folded her into his arms and held her, as he’d not held a woman for years.
She’d slapped him.
He didn’t care. He just…held.
One minute she was out-of-control crazy. The next minute she was being hugged.
She was rigid with shock, but maybe rigid was too mild a word for it. She felt like she was frozen.
If she moved…But there was no if. She couldn’t move. She didn’t know who she would be if she moved. She would be some out-of-control creature who screamed and hit…
She had to apologise. She had to pull away and say she was sorry, but her body wouldn’t obey. Tremors were starting, shudders that ran all through her. If she pulled away she’d have nothing to hold her. All she could do was let this man—this stranger—keep her close and stop her crumpling.
She was falling into him and he was holding her as she had to be held. She was moulding to him, feeling the warmth and strength of him, feeling the steadiness of his heartbeat, and it was as if in some way he was giving hers back.
She was delusional. Crazy. She needed to pull herself together, but not yet, not yet. For now she could only stand within his arms while the world somehow righted itself, restored itself to order, until she finally found the strength to pull away and face the consequences of what she’d done.
Sam specialised in paediatric cardiology. He treated children and babies with heart problems. In his working life he faced parents on the edge of control—or who had tipped over into an abyss of grief. He never got used to it. He’d learned techniques to keep control of his emotions. To express quiet sympathy, to offer hope when hope was possible, to listen when listening was all he had to give.
But he’d never felt like he did now.
This made no sense. Yes, his dog was hurt. Yes, it had been an appalling evening but if this woman was a trained nurse…For her to collapse like this…
For him to feel like this…
Why? What was it with this woman that was making his heart twist?
He held her and felt her take strength from him. He felt the rigidity ease, felt her slump against him, and he felt her quietly gather herself.
He should move her away but his rigid protection of personal space wasn’t working right now. She was so vulnerable…and yet what she’d done, how she’d acted, had taken pure strength. There was no way he could let her down now, and when finally she found the strength to tug away he was aware of a sharp stab of loss.
She hadn’t cried. She