Hearts Of Gold. Meredith Webber

with a ‘see where it goes’ experiment.

      After all, the man was returning to the US in a year. It wouldn’t be a for ever and ever kind of relationship.

      She worried about it all the way home.

      ‘So, what do you think, Dad?’

      Her father was breakfasting with Henry in the kitchen, and as he had so willingly gone into exile with her—had, in fact, arranged a lot of it—she’d had to share this new development with him.

      ‘You like him?’

      ‘I do,’ she admitted, then she took a deep breath. ‘But there’s more to it than liking and more complications than a quick romance with a nice man. Remember I told you about dancing with the man on the terrace at the hotel? The night I left Dennis? The night I phoned home?’

      ‘I remember too much about that night,’ her father growled. ‘Too bloody much!’

      Annie reached out and squeezed his shoulder.

      ‘It’s all behind us, Dad,’ she said. ‘We’ve moved on. Anyway, he’s the man. Alex is. He’s the man I danced with that night.’

      ‘Then I should like to shake his hand,’ her father said, not seeing the point Annie was trying to make.

      ‘You will, and maybe soon, but you won’t say anything. That’s the problem, Dad. Don’t you see? He moves in the same circles as Dennis. You’ve done so much to hide me from him and his private investigators, and by getting close to Alex I could wreck all that.’

      ‘If he’s a decent man, there’s no way he’d betray you to that—that animal!’

      ‘He is a decent man, and that’s what worries me. I’ll be going into a relationship with him, however casual, under false pretences—knowing it can never go anywhere, that I could never marry him. Oh, I know I’m looking too far ahead, and we might never get that far in our relationship, but if we do…’

      She broke off, unable to put into words the uncertainty she felt.

      ‘What if you enjoy the present and let the future take care of itself, love?’ her father suggested, covering her hand with his and giving her fingers a squeeze. ‘You had precious little happiness in your life with Dennis, for all your insistence he wasn’t always the way he turned out. You deserve all the love that comes your way. Go for it, and we’ll sort out what needs to be sorted out when and if it happens.’

      Annie felt her heart lift at her father’s assurance, though some doubts remained. Plenty of doubts!

      Alex was as good as his word, arriving early evening, freshly showered and shaven and slightly less tired-looking, wearing black jeans and a charcoal polo shirt and looking so—so manly that Annie felt her heart skip with excitement, the way it had when she’d been a teenager on one of her very first dates.

      ‘You’d better come in and meet the author,’ Annie suggested, when they’d both stood awkwardly on the doorstep for far too long.

      ‘I’d like that,’ Alex replied, and Annie relaxed. For a moment there she’d thought it was all going to fall apart—her with her skipping heart, dry mouth and brain that refused to function, and Alex thinking who knew what about the dummy who’d opened the door.

      Primed to say nothing about the past, Rod Talbot greeted Alex easily, but Annie knew his sharp eyes were taking in the man, and his writer’s mind would store all the conversation for perusal later.

      ‘Annie tells me you’ve read some of my books. I hope they haven’t had you cursing over the author’s ineptitude.’

      ‘On the contrary,’ Alex said. ‘I’ve found them good fast reads. Totally engrossing. And though I don’t as yet know Sydney, you paint a picture of a fascinating city.’

      ‘It is that!’ Rod said, and Annie smiled to herself, remembering the hours she and her father had spent exploring the city when he’d first decided to set his mysteries here.

      She watched Alex as he chatted to her father, bringing up scenes from the books he’d read, asking questions about writing.

      ‘Can you type or do you use a voice-activated programme on a computer?’

      Her father held up his hands.

      ‘Tactful way to ask the question,’ he answered. ‘Rheumatoid arthritis—terrible disease. Started out thinking I’d save my hands—had knuckle replacements and all, but no good came of them. No, the voice programme works for me. You have to train them, you know, to your own voice and words, but Katy—I call mine Katy—makes me feel as if I’ve got a secretary. Katy knows me nearly as well as Annie does.’

      ‘Dad also runs a tape recorder, so if something happens to the computer version of the story, he’s got it on tape.’

      ‘But what about changing things—going back over to take something out or put something in? I have to do that all the time just writing a paper, so that must be hard.’

      ‘I have a real secretary for that,’ Rod explained. ‘She comes for three hours every afternoon and we tidy things up. I can type a bit so I do some of that part as well.’

      ‘And you’re fairly mobile? Able to transfer yourself? Do you drive?’

      Annie smiled to herself. She’d heard Alex ask the parents of his patients personal questions that seemed unrelated to their child’s condition, but knew he liked a whole picture of the family, saying it helped him see what stresses might arise later when they were responsible for caring for their convalescing child.

      Her father seemed untroubled by Alex’s interest, explaining he could take care of himself, just used the chair for mobility because his hip joints made walking both painful and risky. But, yes, he drove—had a lift on the car to put his wheelchair on the top of it, and used hand controls fixed to the steering wheel.

      ‘It’s the very latest system. Would you like to see it?’

      ‘I would,’ Alex said, and Annie started planning dinner. Her father was enjoying Alex’s company and Annie knew Alex was genuinely interested, not just trying to make a good first impression. In fact, she doubted it would occur to Alex that he was making a good impression.

      ‘We may as well eat here,’ she said, when they returned an hour later—her father having taken Alex for a drive to show him how the car worked.

      Alex began to protest, but Annie shook her head.

      ‘We can go for a walk after dinner,’ she told him. ‘After all, you cooked for me last night—why shouldn’t I cook for you?’

      Henry, who’d greeted Alex earlier, sniffed around him, looking for Minnie, and not finding her had gone to bed, now heard the magic word ‘walk’ and appeared from the laundry where he slept.

      ‘Not you,’ Annie told him.

      ‘Best you take the dog,’ her father said, but Annie ignored the comment, instead instructing the men to sit down and asking Alex what he’d like to drink.

      ‘Dad and I will both have red wine. Would you like a glass or would you prefer something else?’

      ‘A glass of red would be great,’ he said, and went on to mention some of the Australian red wines that had become his favourites.

      ‘Lucky you,’ Annie told him, showing him the bottle before she poured. It was on the top of his list!

      ‘So we’ve similar tastes in red wine at least,’ he said, smiling at her, though with a rueful look in his eyes as if to apologise about this ‘first date’.

      But the evening, for Annie, was just perfect. Alex seemed right at home, discussing books and wine and making them laugh at the things he’d found hard to understand when he’d first arrived in Australia.

      ‘Just because we speak the same language, we assume we understand