The Man with the Locked Away Heart. Melanie Milburne

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 The one and only service station had a similar appearance, although its worn sign was well out of date with its petrol prices.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