The Man with the Locked Away Heart

CHAPTER TWO

GEMMA showed him into one of the guest rooms, the one that was the most presentable and coincidentally the one furthest away from her room. His little comment about fringe benefits had made her awareness of him heighten. She felt the magnetic pull of his presence, the allure of his aloof, unknowable personality—a heady mix for a girl who hadn’t had a date in close to four years.

She pointed out the main bathroom further along the hall on the second storey. ‘Although we had fairly decent rain a few months ago, it’s best to keep showers short,’ she said. ‘You never know out here when the next rain is going to fall. The meteorologists don’t always get it right.’

‘I am well used to water restrictions,’ he said. ‘Although I’ve lived in Brisbane for the last couple of years, I originally came from Melbourne.’

‘Oh, really?’ she said. ‘What part did you come from?’

‘I grew up in the outer suburbs,’ he said. ‘My parents ran a restaurant in Dandenong.’

‘Were you stationed in the suburbs?’ she asked.

‘No, I was based in the city,’ he said. ‘Homicide.’

There was something about the way he said that word that made Gemma’s skin prickle. ‘So, what brought you up to Brisbane?’ she asked.

‘I wanted a change of scene. A new challenge. A new climate.’

‘Yes, well, Brisbane and Queensland in general will certainly give you that, compared to Melbourne,’ she said.

‘Do you miss your family, living so far away?’ he asked.

Gemma thought of her father with his new wife and young family. He had remarried within four months of her mother’s death in an accident. She still hadn’t quite forgiven him for it. Her comfortable childhood home had been completely renovated and extended into an unrecognisable showpiece that had been featured in several home magazines. It was as if her stepmother had wanted every trace of Gemma’s mother eradicated. Gemma’s childhood bedroom had been knocked down to make room for a third bathroom no one ever used. ‘No, not really,’ she said. ‘We pretty much live our own lives. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll make a start on dinner while you settle in. There are fresh towels in the bathroom if you’d like to freshen up before we eat.’

Gemma darted back to her bedroom and changed into jeans and a cotton shirt, this time with a push-up bra underneath. She ran a brush through her hair before pulling it back into a ponytail rather than leaving it hanging limply around her shoulders. She put on some deodorant and some perfume. She plucked out a few strays from her eyebrows and then gave her lips a quick swipe with some lip gloss. She could hear the shower going in the guest bathroom and tried not to imagine Marc Di Angelo standing naked under the spray of water.

She gave herself a vigorous mental shake. He might be gorgeous-looking but he was a cop. Most cops had control and power issues as far as she was concerned. Sure, they did a good job and there was certainly honour in protecting others at the risk of your own life, but she was not going to even think about getting involved in any way with a guy from the force. Besides, he was there as a professional and so was she. How would she appear to the locals if she launched into a red-hot affair with the first man who came striding into town? Desperate and dateless, that’s how. She was already tired of the broad hints about her approaching thirtieth birthday and her single status. It seemed every patient thought it their mission to get her hitched before she hit the big three-oh. So far the candidates presented to her had done nothing for her. But Sergeant Marc Di Angelo was something else again, even if he was too attractive, too arrogant and too controlling for her liking.

She was in the kitchen, watching over the chicken pilaf she was cooking, when Marc Di Angelo came in. He had changed out of his shirt and was now wearing his blue denim jeans with a black T-shirt that clung to his perfectly formed biceps and pectoral muscles like a second skin. His abdomen was so flat she instantly sucked in hers. ‘Dinner’s not quite ready,’ she said. ‘Would you like a drink? I have wine, beer or soft drink and fruit juice.’

‘What are you having?’ he asked.

She gave the pilaf a good grind of black pepper. ‘I had a mineral water just before you arrived,’ she said. ‘I was thinking about having a glass of wine.’

‘Are you on call?’

Gemma met his gaze as she put the pepper grinder down on the bench. ‘I am always on call. That’s the way it is out here. I am the only doctor in a radius of about two hundred kilometres.’

‘Must be tough, not being able to let your hair down occasionally,’ he said.

She shifted her gaze from the piercing intensity of his. ‘I’m not much of a party girl in any case,’ she said. ‘I’ve seen the damage binge drinking does to young people. Lives can be changed in an instant and they can’t always be changed back.’

‘We see a lot of that in the city,’ he said. ‘I’m not a big drinker but I will join in you a single glass of wine.’

She chanced another glance at him. ‘So you’re not currently on duty, Sergeant?’

He gave her a quick movement of his lips that again was not quite a smile. ‘Not at the moment. I came a week early just to get a feel for the place.’

‘First time in the bush?’ she asked.

His dark eyes glinted. ‘Does it show?’

‘A bit,’ she said. ‘But, then, I can’t talk. It took me weeks to get used to everything. Time is slower out here. No one rushes unless they have to. It was frustrating at first but after a while you get used to it. Would you prefer red or white wine?’

‘Red if you have it, but white is fine if not.’

‘I’ll … er … get some from the cellar,’ she said, putting her wooden spoon down with a little thud.

‘You have a cellar?’

‘It’s not mine—I mean, I didn’t have it put in or anything,’ Gemma explained. ‘It’s been here since the house was first built. In a climate as hot as this, it’s too warm upstairs to keep good wines.’

‘Mind if I come with you?’ he asked.

Gemma would have refused his offer, except she absolutely loathed going down to the cellar. Gladys had always gone down there in the past, and then, when she had not been well enough to do so, Rob Foster, the handyman-cum-gardener, had always brought wine up for Gemma on the rare occasions she’d wanted it. The dark dank atmosphere of the cellar made her flesh crawl. It hadn’t helped that on the first and only occasion she had gone down there alone a mouse had scuttled across the earthen floor right in front of her feet.

‘Sure, why not?’ she said, carefully disguising her relief. ‘I might need your help in any case to lift up the trapdoor. It’s over here at the back of the kitchen.’

Sergeant Di Angelo took over the opening of the trapdoor, lifting it as if it was a sheet of cardboard instead of solid timber with iron hinges. Gemma found the light switch and then she hesitated.

‘Is something wrong?’ he asked after a moment.

‘Um—no,’ she said, taking a deep breath and fixing her gaze on the sandstone steps.

‘I’m happy to go first,’ he offered. ‘There might be spiders down there.’

Gemma felt her pride take a dive. ‘Actually, that would be great,’ she said with a tremulous smile. ‘I’m not all that fond of spiders.’

She stood at the top of the steps as he went down and then once he’d given the all-clear she followed, but she stayed on the last step. ‘I think the red stuff is over here,’ she said, pointing vaguely to the left-hand side of the cellar.

Marc Di Angelo looked at her. ‘Are you claustrophobic?’

Gemma rubbed her upper arms with her crossed-over hands. ‘A bit, I guess.’

‘You go back up,’ he said. ‘I’ll get the bottle of wine. Is there any one in particular I should or shouldn’t take?’

‘No, just whatever,’ she said, scooting back up the steps and hovering at the top. ‘I don’t think there’s any Grange Hermitage or Hill of Grace down there.’

‘You never know,’ he said dryly, and bent at the waist to check out the labels as he pulled out various bottles.

Gemma couldn’t stop looking at the way his jeans hugged his taut behind, or the way the muscles of his arms were so well formed. She was used to seeing wellused muscles out here in the Outback. The men were all toned from hard work on the land, but something about Marc Di Angelo’s body made her feminine senses switch into overload. He was so damned attractive. Those eyes of his, so dark, like rich chocolate, and those lips of his, so sensual, and that strong, uncompromising jaw that gave him that don’t-mess-with-me air.

Her insides did a funny little dance as he came back up the steps, carrying a bottle of wine. ‘Here you go,’ he said, handing her the bottle. ‘I’ll put the trapdoor back down.’

She watched as he closed the trapdoor, again lifting it as if it was a diet wafer before shooting home the bolt. ‘So,’ she said with an overly bright smile as she clutched the wine against her middle, ‘no spiders?’

‘None that I could see,’ he said, dusting his hands off on his thighs.

She bit her lip. ‘Um—you’ve got dust on your forehead.’

He wiped the back of his hand across his forehead. ‘Gone?’

She shook her head. ‘No, it’s still there.’ She balanced the wine with one hand as she pointed with the other to just above his left eyebrow. ‘There.’

He gave his face another wipe but he somehow still missed the mark. ‘All gone?’

Gemma felt his eyes lock on hers. The space between them was suddenly no space at all. He was standing so close she could see the darker circle of his black pupils in those incredibly brown eyes. She could even see the pinpoints of stubble on his jaw, the way it outlined every masculine contour of his face—his forceful chin, his firm upper lip, his fuller lower lip and the slopes and indentation of his lean cheeks. She could smell his cleanly showered smell. She could smell man and citrus rolled into one, fresh and sharp and dangerously tempting. Her breath hitched to a halt in her chest. Her mouth went dry. Her heart started to hammer and her legs felt strangely unsupportive.

‘Here,’ he said, and handed her a clean and folded handkerchief from his pocket. ‘You do it.’

Gemma swallowed as her fingers curled around the fabric. Still clutching the wine to her chest, she lifted her other hand and wiped at the smear of dust on his forehead. Touching him, even through fabric, was like touching a live wire. She felt the kickback right up her arm. He must have felt something too for she saw his nostrils flare like those of a stallion and her heart gave another little stumble. ‘I—I think that’s it,’ she said, in a voice that sounded like she was about fifteen years old.

‘Thanks,’ he said, stuffing the handkerchief into his back pocket.

Why doesn’t he move? Gemma thought. She had nowhere to go; she was practically up against the wall in any case.

‘Is there anything I can do to help with dinner?’ he asked.

She suddenly remembered the simmering pilaf she had left unattended. ‘Oh, my gosh,’ she said, and thrust the wine at him. ‘You open this while I check on the chicken. There’s a corkscrew in the second drawer.’

‘This one’s a screw top,’ Marc said.

‘Oh, right.’ She gave him a flustered sort of look as she lifted the lid on the dish she was making.

The smell of chicken and rice and Moroccan spices filled the air and Marc felt his stomach rumble in anticipation. The salad sandwich and instant coffee he had picked up at a roadhouse three hundred kilometres out of Jingilly Creek seemed like a long time ago.

But then his whole life seemed a long time ago.

That’s how he saw things now: before and after. He was stuck in the after and there was no way he could replay his decisions and stay in the before, even though everything in him wished he could. A stint in the country was supposed to reset his focus. Get him back on track. Make him feel the buzz he’d once felt when going to work.

Make him forget.

The trouble was he didn’t want to forget. The continuing nightmares about Simon bleeding to death in front of him were his punishment and he took it like a man. Simon’s wife Julie’s devastated face was another main feature during his dark, sleepless nights. And then there was his godson Sam, little innocent Sam who still didn’t quite grasp that his father was never coming home. Marc dreaded the day when Sam would find out what had happened the day his father had died. How would the boy look on him then?

Forgetting was not his goal and neither was forgiving himself. That just wasn’t going to happen in this lifetime. But distracting himself was something he needed to do. And this place looked about as far away as any place could be from his previous life as a city cop.

As soon as he had driven into this Outback town he had felt as if he had been in a time warp. The place looked like something out of an old movie, with its general store with its tall jars of old-fashioned sweets in the windows and its faded ice-cream cone advertisements on the walls outside. The one and only service station had a similar appearance, although its worn sign was well out of date with its petrol prices. He knew exactly why there had been a sudden shortage of rooms. Places as small as this soon got talking. A hot-shot sergeant from the city was not a welcome guest in a local watering-hole—bad for business. Everyone would think they would be nabbed for drink-driving or causing a disturbance or affray. No wonder Ron Curtis had sent him straight out to Gemma Kendall.

Not that she was all that welcoming either. She had grudgingly let him stay but it was pretty clear she was uneasy about it. Her recent inheritance had had his alarm bells ringing as soon as he had heard about it via the woman at the general store when he’d enquired about local accommodation options. It all seemed above board. No one in town suspected anything untoward, but Marc hadn’t been a cop for thirteen years without having seen just about everything there was to see in terms of human greed.

Gemma Kendall was a cute little blonde who had supposedly come out here to do her bit for the bush, but she had just collected a windfall that by anyone’s standards was a little unusual. Sure, this place was as she had said, a little rundown, but with a coat or two of paint and a few quick repairs it would fetch a fine price on the currently overblown property market. How had she done it? How had she got an old lady to rewrite her will in the last days of her life, leaving everything to her? Gemma Kendall was one smart cookie, that was for sure. Her innocent façade was convincing, a little too convincing, he thought as he watched her stir her delicious-smelling dish.

‘So, what do you do out here in your spare time?’ he asked after he had poured them both a glass of rich red wine.

She took a tentative sip before answering. ‘I haven’t had much spare time until recently,’ she said. ‘I’m usually pretty busy with the clinic and station visits, but then Gladys needed me almost full time by the end. Narelle—that’s the community nurse-cum receptionist you met this afternoon at the clinic—helped when she could. She’s a widow with two kids. Her husband died four years ago. She juggles their property and her parttime work with me. Her mother helps but it’s not easy for her.’

Marc took a small sip of the wine, which was surprisingly good. ‘What happened to her husband?’

‘Car accident,’ she said, adjusting the heat setting on the cooker. ‘He rolled his ute out on a back road. There was no doctor here at that point. He might have lived if there had been.’

‘I suppose that’s the problem with outlying areas,’ he said. ‘Time and distance are always against you.’

‘Yes, that’s true,’ she said as she set out two plates and cutlery on the large kitchen table. ‘We had another accident earlier today. A local farmer, Nick Goglin, came off his all-terrain bike. He’s in a coma with head and probable spinal injuries. His wife and kids will be devastated if he doesn’t make it. There’s no way Meg will be able to run that cattle property on her own.’

‘It’s certainly a tough life out here,’ Marc said, ‘which makes me wonder why you’ve stuck it out for so long.’

Her grey-blue eyes met his across the table. ‘Three years isn’t all that long, Sergeant.’

He gave an assenting gesture with his mouth. ‘Maybe not.’ He picked up his fork once she had done the same. ‘This smells great. Do you enjoy cooking?’

‘Very much,’ she said. ‘What about you? Did your parents insist you work in the family’s restaurant from a young age?’

Marc picked up his wine and gave it a swirl in the glass. ‘I spent a lot of time learning the ropes. There was certainly some expectation I would take on the business but my heart wasn’t in it. My younger sister and her husband run the restaurant now.’

‘Your parents are retired?’ she asked.

‘Yes, they travel a lot now,’ he said. ‘I have another sister who lives in Sicily. She’s married with a couple of kids. My parents love spending time over there with them.’

She leaned her elbows on the table as she cradled her wine in both hands. ‘So, what about you, Sergeant?’ she asked. ‘Is there a Mrs Di Angelo or Mrs Di Angelo-to-be back in Brisbane, waiting for you to come home?’

Marc held her gaze for a fraction longer than necessary. ‘No rings.’ He held up his left hand. ‘No wife, no fiancée, no current girlfriend.’

Her grey-blue eyes rounded slightly. ‘You are either very hard to please or hell to be around.’

His mouth twisted wryly because both were true to some degree. Even his sisters had told him bluntly he wasn’t a nice person to be around any more. As to dating … well, he could certainly do with the sex, but he could no longer handle the expectation of commitment that so often went with it. He was a drifter, not a stayer. If you stayed too long, you got emotionally involved and that was the last thing he wanted. Not professionally and certainly not personally. ‘What about you?’ he asked. ‘Is there a man in your life at present?’

She put her wineglass down, a delicate shade of pink tingeing her cheeks. ‘Not currently,’ she said.

‘Too hard to please or too hard to be around?’ he asked, his eyes gleaming.

‘Too far away,’ she said with a rueful expression. ‘This place doesn’t offer the greatest dating opportunities. The men out here tend to marry young, while most women my age have three or four kids by now. I’m not interested in being involved with someone just for the sake of it. Anyone can do that. I want more for my life. I want to feel connected intellectually as well as physically and emotionally.’

Marc leant back in his chair. ‘So you’re a romantic, Dr Kendall?’

Her eyes challenged his. ‘Is that a crime?’ she asked.

He leaned forward and picked up his wineglass again, frowning as he looked at the red liquid. ‘No, of course not,’ he said. ‘It’s just that sort of package doesn’t come around all that often.’ He sat back and met her eyes. ‘You might be waiting for a long time for someone to come along who ticks all those boxes for you.’

‘Better to have five years with the right one than twenty-five with the wrong one,’ she said.

Marc felt a hammer blow of guilt hit him in the chest. Simon and Julie had been married five years. He had been their best man. He remembered the day so clearly. He had forgotten the rings and had had to get a colleague to bring them to the church in a squad car. Everyone had laughed, thinking it had been a set-up. So many memories. So many images of happy times he had shared with them both. Marc still remembered the day Simon told him he was going to be a father. He had been so proud and excited about building a family with Julie. There had been photos of Sam and Julie plastered all over Simon’s desk at the station. Their anniversary had been the week before Simon had been killed. Marc had taken all of that away from them: their future; their hopes and dreams; their happiness.

The silence was measured by the sound of the large wall clock ticking near the pantry.

‘What about you, Sergeant?’ Gemma asked. ‘Do you want to settle down one day?’

His eyes met hers but this time it looked like a light had gone off inside, leaving them like an empty, dark room. ‘I am Australian born but, as you have probably guessed, I have a strong Italian background. Family is supposed to be important to us Italians, but I must be an aberration as I don’t see myself settling down.’

Gemma pursed her lips. ‘So you’re a bit of a playboy, then, are you?’

He gave her that sexy not-quite-a-smile again, the glinting light back on in his eyes. ‘I always make an effort to leave no casualties in the love stakes.’

‘Have you ever been in love?’ Oh, God, why did I just ask that? Gemma thought with a cringe of embarrassment. She took a quick sip of wine so she could bury her head in the glass.

‘No, not unless you count the time I fell for my kindergarten teacher, Miss Moffat,’ he said. ‘I didn’t miss a single day of my first year at school. My mother was very disappointed it didn’t last. I had to be bribed to go most days, right up until I left high school.’