Forbidden Nights With The Boss. Anna J. Stewart

silence stretched while her mind tossed questions back and forth—how bad had it been in the army? Was the engagement over or did the ex still love the morose man? Cam morose? Not that she, Jo, had seen.

      ‘Have you been on your own since your father left? No wild affairs, no men passing through your life, no blighted romance?’

      Jo found the questions so unexpected—and hadn’t it been her turn to be probing?—that she had to stop the car again.

      ‘And you’re asking because?’ she asked, while just a little twinge of hope twittered in her heart.

      He raised his eyebrows as if her demand had surprised him. Then he smiled and she wished she’d just kept driving.

      ‘I just wondered,’ he said, oh, so gently, ‘whether you might have been punishing yourself for your sister’s accident for way too long—not surfing, which you obviously love—and maybe standing back from any kind of close relationship because she can’t have one.’

      ‘I suppose I asked for that,’ she admitted ruefully, ‘telling the story of my life to a psychologist.’

      She shifted so she was leaning back against the door, almost out of touching distance—not wanting to touch, although it was so tempting.

      Concentrate on the conversation, she told herself. Maybe get him talking.

      She didn’t want to consider why that seemed important right now, so she didn’t.

      ‘Do you do it to yourself?’ she asked instead. ‘Discuss the pros and cons of your surfing escape inside your head? Is it easier to understand grief and loss and horror if you can rationalise it through stuff you’ve learned from books?’

      He smiled again and she knew she shouldn’t have stopped the car—should have driven straight home and escaped into the house. The problem was, the more she was with this man, the more she wanted to know of him—and be with him.

      But for all he made noises about maybe staying longer in Crystal Cove, she knew he’d eventually move on.

      ‘I’m not sure it works, doing it to yourself—well, it hasn’t so far for me, although every day things look a little brighter and going on gets a little easier,’ he said. And this time it was he who touched—reaching out to rest his hand on her arm as she had rested hers on his.

      The brush of his fingers on her skin zapped her nerve endings to life and she found herself shivering—not with cold but with a weird mix of excitement and delight.

      She definitely shouldn’t have stopped the car.

      And, no, she wasn’t going to cover his hand with hers, as he’d done earlier. Definitely not, although her hand was moving in that direction.

      The jangling tones of her mobile stopped the strangeness going on in the car right then and there. She answered it, and listened, her heart sinking in her chest.

      ‘Do you want us to come over?’ she asked.

      ‘It’s Jackie’s choice,’ Lauren told her.

      Jo closed the phone, not even bothering with a goodbye, then bumped her forehead gently on the steering-wheel as frustration threatened to overwhelm her.

      ‘Jackie going back to Richard?’ Cam asked, his voice deep with concern and understanding.

      ‘Apparently he came to see her when the boys were out with us. He took her for a drive so they could talk. He’s just collected all three of them.’

      ‘Surely she’ll be safe for a while,’ Cam said, and Jo shrugged.

      ‘It’s so hard to predict. Yes, I’d say in most cases where a woman goes back, the man does try to control his temper for a while, and in Jackie’s case the abuse was more emotional than physical, but Richard’s such an unknown quantity, and though Jackie is an intelligent woman, she’s lived under his domination for so long now, I wonder if she’ll ever be able to break free.’

      ‘Are you his doctor?’

      Jo looked at Cam, wondering where this was going.

      ‘Richard’s? No way. He’s one of those men who’d drive three hours down the road rather than trust a woman doctor. He used to see Dad but, then, young men like him rarely see a doctor anyway. He was good at all sports so any injuries he had were mostly sport related. He might see Tom at the hospital now, if he has a strain or sprain.’

      She hesitated, wondering why Cam had asked, trying to fathom his thinking.

      ‘Why?’ she finally asked.

      ‘I was thinking if he did use the clinic, you could have switched him to me. I couldn’t have brought up the subject of abuse, not in any way, but he might be harbouring a grudge against you.’

      Jo smiled.

      ‘That’s a lovely offer, but I’m a big girl. I can handle myself.’

      He shook his head.

      ‘Not so big,’ he said, ‘and you of all people should know that no one could handle an angry man with a cricket bat.’

      The thought of Jackie returning to that situation filled Jo with fear, although the bat, as far as she knew, had been no more than a threat.

      ‘Best we get home,’ she said, sliding the vehicle back into gear.

      Richard Trent came at ten. Cam couldn’t say for certain he’d known the man would come, but his gut feeling—and his knowledge of men from his time in the army—had made him ultra-cautious, so he was sitting not on his deck but in the darkened living room of the flat, music playing softly as he explored the world of programmes for abusive men on his laptop. The backlight of the screen was sufficient for him to read the information offered by the internet.

      The vehicle pulled up, a dual-cab, four-wheel-drive ute, a muscle car. At first Cam thought it might be Mike, maybe returning for a private visit to Jo, but as the man came into range of the sensor lights, Cam realised he didn’t know him.

      Neither did he know Richard Trent, and Jo hadn’t answered about having men—or even a man—in her life, so it could be perfectly innocent, but Cam was already out the door, mooching towards his van, the bundle of clean beach towels he’d prepared earlier tucked under his arm.

      ‘Hi!’ he said, all innocence. ‘Visiting Jo, are you? I’m Fraser Cameron, her new tenant in the flat. Working for her over the holidays.’

      The stranger, his face pink but his lips thinned to a white line of anger, stopped about a yard in front of Cam, glaring at him.

      ‘So you’re the bastard, are you? Call you Cam, don’t they? Cam this, Cam that, my boys haven’t stopped, but let me tell you this, Fraser Cameron, my name is Richard Trent and you stay away from my kids. If they want to learn to surf, I’ll teach them, understand?’

      Cam held out his free hand in a ‘hey, man’ gesture, then actually used the words.

      ‘Hey, man, no worries. It was just that Jo found the old boards in her storeroom and, knowing the boys, she thought they might like to try them.’

      ‘Well, they don’t and they won’t and you can tell that to Dr Harris as well. She, of all people, should know how dangerous it is to surf, seeing what it did to her sister.’

      It flicked through Cam’s mind that Jo had been right—it had taken all of two days for someone to tell him about her sister.

      ‘And tell her to stay away from my wife while you’re at it. My family is none of her business, understand?’

      Cam nodded, but his mind was whirring. Richard Trent was wound so tightly he was going to unravel totally before too long. Cam had seen it in young soldiers, particularly among those handling new responsibilities, and he knew it was impossible to predict just how the unravelling would happen. It could be an explosive burst, or a crumble into desperation