A Love Worth Saving Page 8

  ‘Then shouldn’t you be seeing them?’ but she couldn’t help answering his smile with one of her own.

  ‘Probably.’ His grin grew wider. ‘But I wanted to tell you how happy I am that you’ve come on board. There are so many patients just like Ralph that you are going to help.’

  ‘It comes with the territory,’ Ana said with a shrug, though his words touched a place deep inside her, a warmth bursting to life.

  ‘Maybe, but I’d like to solve a problem for you the way you’ve solved this problem for me.’

  ‘What problem?’

  ‘You’re moving house problem.’

  ‘Really?’ Ana cocked an eyebrow, doubtful.

  ‘Really. I’d like to volunteer my services to help you with the move.’

  Ana’s eyes widened in surprise. Brad never “volunteered” to spend time with her in daylight. In fact, he usually went out of his way to avoid being alone with her. Could this mean he was actually ready to start-

  ‘And don’t worry, I know there’ll be no “funny business”,’ he added, waggling his eyebrows suggestively.

  ‘There won’t?’

  ‘Of course not. We’re friends, aren’t we?’

  There was nothing else she could do. Ignoring the disappointment swirling in her stomach, she nodded. At least it was a step in a different direction. Maybe not the exact direction she wanted, but it was off their well-worn path, at least.

  And it really was a solution to her problem. Brad had moved around enough times in the past ten years to be a pro at it. ‘Okay, fine. You can help. But we’re starting early on Saturday, so no boozy night out on Friday.’

  ‘What do you take me for?’ Brad feigned offense.

  ‘I know exactly what you are, Brad, which is why I’ll repeat it: no boozy night out.’

  Chapter Six

  No boozy night out.

  Her famous last words. If only she’d followed them.

  Keeping her eyes firmly shut against the blindingly bright light pouring through her window, Ana stretched an arm out of bed to grasp her mobile phone. Holding it directly above her head, she squinted one eye open to check the time.

  7:45

  Dammit! Brad would be here in fifteen minutes.

  Why oh why had she insisted they do this in the morning? Okay, so she hadn’t planned on having a big night. She’d agreed to a late dinner with Cara. That was all. But the dinner had extended to dancing. And drinking. And then the night had somehow gotten away from her.

  Compared to some of their previous nights out, it hadn’t been huge. After all, she’d been home by two.

  But that hadn’t made one iota of difference to her hangover.

  Grrr. She was too old for this. When had her body decided it didn’t like booze anymore? At Uni she used to drink all night and work the next day, no problems. But now…just the thought of getting out of bed made her shudder.

  Maybe she should ring Brad and cancel today? No. She needed to do this today. And she wouldn’t let a puny little hangover stand in the way of her new future.

  Suppressing a groan, she slid out of bed and somehow made her way into the kitchen. She downed two Nurofen tablets and half a litre of water, feeling the icy liquid seep into her body, instantly relieving her severely dehydrated brain.

  It was a shame the relief was only temporary.

  Closing the fridge door, she shuffled back to her bedroom just as her phone vibrated, indicating the arrival of a text message. Unlocking the screen, she saw it was from Brad.

  Got the truck. Be there in 15.

  A little burst of warmth shot through her system. It was sweet of him to help her. She didn’t care what Cara said. And his timing was perfect—she had just enough time to jump into the shower.

  ***

  Brad turned the key, killing the rumbling engine of the small truck he’d hired for the day. Brushing aside the little voice inside his head telling him today was a mistake; he jumped down from the cab and made short work of the footpath to the front door of the old, renovated Queenslander.

  He assured himself that helping Ana—with anything—could never be a mistake. Swinging open the brown security door, he knocked on the locked green wooden one.

  Not that it should do anything to him. So far this week had been a breeze, with minimal complications at work. Maybe it was the different environment or because there were others around. Whatever the difference was, it made life a lot easier. He wasn’t breaking into cold sweats. The spidery fear wasn’t creeping across his skin, the worry for her safety—though still present—wasn’t completely debilitating.

  And he hadn’t had an uncontrollable urge to scrub his hands clean.

  It was still hard to settle his nerves, though, as he waited for her to answer the door. Because there was no way in hell he wanted her to find out just how weak he was. Just how damaged he wa—Whoa!

  The concerns fell straight out of his mind as the door swung open, revealing Ana in all her early-morning glory. Alright, so she was dressed (damn!) but she had on the teeniest, tiniest pair of red shorts he’d ever seen her in and her legs just seemed to go on forever. They looked smooth, and creamy, and his hands itched with the need to run up and over all that glorious skin.

  Clenching his hands tight to stop from reaching for her, he dragged his eyes up and away from the distraction, fully intent on meeting her eyes and greeting her properly. But hot damn, she was wearing one of those little camisole tops that clung to every inch of her until it stopped shy of covering the tops of her creamy breasts. Blood left his head in a rush, on a direct journey south, and he gulped, trying to swallow past the sudden dryness in his throat.

  All he wanted to do was push her against the back of the door and rip the black lace—

  ‘Beautiful morning, Ana,’ a chirpy voice called from the street. Startled, he spun around to see an elderly couple with matching pale green tracksuits and white hair walking along the curb and waving.

  ‘Morning Mr Beard, Mrs Beard,’ Ana called out over Brad’s shoulder. She waved a hand at the couple before they disappeared behind the hedge separating Travis’ front yard from his neighbour’s.

  Brad cleared his throat and made sure he had control of his rampaging thoughts before turning back to Ana. ‘Friendly neighbours,’ he said, diverting attention from his belated greeting.

  ‘Maybe that’s just ‘cos I’m such a friendly person,’ Ana told him, grinning widely as she ran a hand through her still wet hair.

  ‘Maybe,’ he answered, his eyes dipping down to her curvaceous body again before he managed to stop himself. Briefly he closed his eyes and gave his head a quick shake. He needed to focus if he was going to make it through the day with his sanity intact.

  When he opened his eyes, Ana’s grin was even wider, if that was possible and her eyes were sparkling, despite the remnants of bleary red veins in amongst the white. ‘Coming in?’

  Brad nodded and followed her in, his eyes pinned to the floor, then to the roof and then to anything other than the cusp of those shorts as they curved around Ana’s butt-cheeks. Yep, today was going to be hard.

  As his gaze flowed over the furniture he realised the inside of the house looked different to the last time he was here. The glass topped dining table had been replaced by an earthy, hardwood one with matching wooden benches. The fancy, fragile-looking lamps and artworks that had been scattered through the living areas had also disappeared and there were paint samples pasted to the wall in homey, down-to-earth colours.

  ‘Travis renovating again, is he?’

  ‘He’s finally de-Ashleeing the place,’ Ana threw over her shoulder as she led the way to the kitchen.

  ‘So things are going well with Kelli, then?’

  ‘Disgustingly well,’ Ana answered with a faux shiver. ‘Hence the desperate need to get out of here.’

  ‘Not too keen on playing the third wheel?’ Brad chuckled.

  ‘Never.’ Again came the shiver. ‘Do you want a coffee?’ she asked, coming
to a halt behind the island bench in the kitchen.

  ‘No, thanks, had one on the way.’ Brad leaned a hip against the bench as he watched her shrug and stretch up to grab a mug for herself, her breasts rising with the movement. It wasn’t the only body part on the rise.

  Not. Good. He needed something to distract himself. ‘So, ah, are you all packed?’ Yes. That would work. A bit of manual labour might keep the blood flowing to other areas of his body, because right now it was all heading in one direction and one direction only.

  ‘Keen, aren’t you?’ she threw at him, popping a pod in the coffee machine.

  ‘And you’re not?’

  ‘Maybe after a coffee,’ she conceded, slumping forward on the bench, sinking her head into her hands.

  ‘Are you okay?’ he reached towards her, his finger brushing against her chin to tilt her head up. She looked fine, her eyes were a little red, but -

  ‘Yeah, yeah, I’m fine,’ she pulled her head from his hand and flicked her hair around her face. ‘Just a little—’

  ‘Hungover?’ he guessed, the penny dropping and sinking into the base of his gut like a lump of lead.

  ‘Yeah,’ she stretched the word out as she reached for her now full mug, adding a couple of hefty spoons of sugar and a dash of milk.

  ‘I thought last night was supposed to be a booze-free night.’ Brad tried to keep the rising tension out of his voice. He shouldn’t care about this. But he did. ‘That was your rule.’

  ‘For you, not me,’ she answered, throwing him a watery grin across the top of the mug, but he wasn’t buying it. She met his doubt-filled gaze for only a few moments before backing down. ‘Okay, fine, I wasn’t supposed to either.’

  ‘What happened?’

  The question was out of his mouth before he could stop it. Damn! Not exactly appropriate but he couldn’t take it back now. And the dark place inside him needed to know.

  ‘Nothing happened. I went out to dinner with Cara and it went the way it usually does with her.’

  Ignoring the queue of questions lining up in his mind—all of which fell into the category of “none of his business”—Brad pasted a smile across his face and shrugged, ‘Fair enough.’

  ‘Really?’ she cocked an eyebrow at him this time. ‘You’re letting me off that easy?’

  ‘You’re life,’ he shrugged again. ‘I’m sure the hangover is punishment enough.’

  ‘That. It. Is,’ she agreed, taking a huge gulp of coffee. ‘Hopefully the Nurofen will kick in soon.’

  ‘Good luck with that,’ he chuckled, and this time the pleasure was almost genuine.

  She smiled back at him, the sparkle still there in her eyes despite the red tinge, and he felt a lump form in his chest. It would be so easy to lean forward, brush his lips against hers, and run his hand through her hair, pulling her tight. It was almost second nature for him to reach out and touch her.

  But he couldn’t. They weren’t doing that anymore.

  Every fibre of his being felt the distance between them and hated it.

  He shook his head slightly, tried to snap himself out of the mood. He needed to focus on today’s plan. ‘So where are we starting?’

  She blinked, as though she was startled by the question and for just a moment he thought he saw a familiar flare of desire in her eyes. A longing that matched his. But then it was gone and he wasn’t sure if he’d imagined it.

  ‘I’ve got a little bit of packing to finish in my bedroom, but I’ve stored most of the furniture downstairs, so you can start loading some of that into the truck. If that’s okay?’

  ‘Yeah, of course, whatever you need done,’ he gestured toward the house.

  ‘You may regret this,’ Ana warned him. She took a final gulp from the mug, dumped it into the sink and led him down a familiar internal stairway that opened up to a small, enclosed room dominated by a large billiards table.

  ‘I thought this was Travis’,’ he hesitated on the bottom stair, eyeing the table dubiously. He didn’t just think it was Travis’ table. He knew it was. He’d helped his old friend pick out this particular piece of pride and joy, and participated in numerous boys’ nights here over the years, drinking beers and placing wagers on the outcome of their games. No way was he touching it.

  ‘I don’t have a death wish,’ Ana dismissed with a flick of her hand. ‘This is just the shortcut.’

  ‘What shortcut?’

  ‘Seriously?’ she paused half way across the room to look back at him. ‘You’ve never been through here?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Well, watch and learn, mister,’ she continued to the far wall, pushed aside the maroon floor-length curtain he’d never in all his time here thought to look behind, and revealed a sturdy, wooden door.

  He blinked, his gaze shifting between Ana and the door as she deftly turned the handle and a dark, cool, slightly musty space opened out in front of them.

  ‘Are you telling me this has been here the whole time? As in, the entire, what is it? Six years Travis has been living here?’

  ‘Eight years, actually. And, yes, it’s been here the entire time,’ she grinned at him before disappearing into the dark, cavernous space.

  He followed her through just as the light flickered on, revealing a large storage area beneath the house. Given the house was an old Queenslander, he probably should have expected it. Most of the older houses were built on stilts to allow increased ventilation in the pre air-conditioning eras.

  ‘Some of the stuff down here is Travis’, obviously, but this section here is all my stuff.’ Ana was standing on the left side of the area, gesturing to row upon row of boxes, and lounges, and more miscellaneous furniture than he was expecting.

  ‘That’s…a lot of stuff.’

  ‘I know, right,’ Ana looked at her belongings with a hint of bashfulness. ‘It’s not that I’m a hoarder, as such, but I don’t like throwing things out. Most of the furniture was mine and Gabby’s but Steve’s place was fully furnished when she moved in with him and she kind of left it all for me.’

  ‘That was generous of her.’

  ‘Oh, I paid her for her half of the furniture. I wasn’t going to let her just give the stuff away. Anyway, all this has to go to my new place,’ she casually waved a hand towards her belongings. ‘But you should be able move it through the doors here.’ She walked to the edge of the underground storage area where two large sections of the wooden paling walls stood attached to hinges. ‘These doors lead into the garage. It’s only my car in there at the moment, so there should be plenty of room.’

  ‘Alright, I’ll see how I go,’ Brad rubbed his hands together, keen to get started. Or, at least, keen to get Ana out of this confined space, because even in the dim lighting she was too delectable for words. A scrape of dirt had somehow brushed onto the top of her chest, and right now all he wanted to do was grab a soft washer and wipe it away. Then he’d slowly push down the strap of her camisole and run the washer over every inch of her-

  Yep. He definitely had to get her out of here.

  Dammit! He’d lost count of the number of times he’d been with this woman, and yet it was never enough. Would he ever stop wanting her?

  With a final wave and a promise to return soon, Ana left him alone in the storage den.

  Alright, he could do this. He just needed to block the image of that cheeky little ass as it swanned out of here and focus on the task at hand.

  A half hour later he’d made some good headway. He’d moved the refrigerator, the single armchairs, the dining chairs and a good half of the boxes—so most of the stuff he could do on his own. He was loading another of Ana’s clear, plastic storage tubs onto the moving dolly when an image just below the surface caught his eye.

  Leaning forward to take a closer look, he saw an aged newspaper clipping, an article from the front page of an eighteen-year-old paper. The headline read, “Teen Hero Saves The Day” and below it was a large picture of him at fourteen, his dark-blond hair short in the clean-cut sty
le of his youth. Next to the photo of him was a smaller one of Ana in her school uniform, looking tiny even for eleven. And in the corner, almost faded, was a picture of a bedraggled young man, with long stringy hair, and sallow, pock-marked skin.

  Stomach taut with tension he lifted the lid off the box and reached in, a finger tracing over aged paper. Ignoring his large, beaming face, Brad’s fingers traced over the smaller image in the corner—the image of the man he had killed.

  He hadn’t read or looked at anything to do with that time in what felt like forever. Back when it had all happened, the media had had a field day. His face, and Ana’s, had been plastered across newspapers around the country. Most of the people in their lives had been contacted by one media outlet or another looking for a scoop. And, at the time, he’d been more than happy to oblige. Buoyed up on his youthful testosterone and an inflated sense of justice, he’d happily chatted away about that night to anyone who would listen. Right up until one journalist posed the question that had haunted him for almost twenty years.

  Man, he’d been such an idiot.

  At least he knew better now.

  ‘Hiya, how’s it going down here?’

  Brad dropped the paper clipping back into the box and slammed the lid in place.

  ‘I’ve brought a glass of icy water down. It can get rather sweaty in here, even if it is almost winter.’

  ‘Ah, thanks,’ Brad reached for the glass, chugged down the water, and handed it back to her in two seconds flat, hoping she’d take the hint and return upstairs. He wasn’t in the right headspace to talk to anyone—least of all Ana. And he knew he had no chance of getting there until he got the lid back on the past, both literally and figuratively.

  ‘I’m finished upstairs, now, so I’ve come down to give you a hand. Where are you up to?’

  Before he could react, she was reaching for the box beside him, ready to load it onto the dolly.

  ‘Oh, how’d this come undone?’ she asked, noticing the loosened lid just before she put the new container on top of it.

  ‘I was just…ah…I haven’t seen those things in years.’ Brad waved a hand at the newspaper clipping before locking the lid in place. He took the next container from her arms and settled it on top, hiding the evidence of their past. If only he could hide the memories as effectively.