Dreaming Of... Australia. Annie West

but rough enough that she winced—just slightly. ‘You can ask me personal things but I can’t ask you?’

      ‘I …’ That was actual hurt in his eyes. Or was she imagining it? Her pulse quickened. ‘I’ve … I must have …’

      He leaned forward. ‘Everything I know about you I know from that one night on the mountain. Since then you haven’t … invited personal conversation.’

      Her heart beat in her throat. ‘We just had one. About …’ The Kiss.

      ‘That wasn’t personal. We were both involved. I’d like to know more about Aimee Leigh, about what makes her tick. You told those kids yesterday more about yourself in one hour than you’ve told me since we met.’

      Old scars pinched tightly. In her household personal discussions had been discouraged lest they led to … you know … actual caring. She didn’t do emotional risk. And opening up to this particular man would definitely be risky.

      ‘Why?’

      The question seemed to anger him. ‘Because we’re friends, Aimee. Or at least I think we are. I don’t know.’ He threw his hands into the air. ‘Maybe we’re not?’

      Her chest tightened. Friends. ‘We are. Of course we are.’ It’s all we ever can be.

      ‘Then open up. Let me in.’

      She matched the lift in his voice, though hers was tighter. ‘I can’t.’

      He pressed his palms onto the table. ‘Why not?’

      ‘Because you’re not mine to let in,’ she half-shouted, her chest fixed with the pain of where they were about to go, of what she’d just admitted.

      Neither of them moved.

      For entire moments.

      Even the birds around them held their breath. ‘Opening up means something to me, Sam. I’m programmed to …’ She shook her head. ‘It means something.’

      Her parents had cloistered her so tightly she didn’t even know how to take a risk. How to dare to.

      He leaned in. ‘Aimee, I’m sorry. I’m not trying to be obtuse. I truly do not understand what you’re saying.’

      Her face pinched, and she recognised somewhere far away, deep inside, that this was not one of her finest moments. Her breath fluttered. ‘I don’t … open up … easily. But if I did it would be because we meant something to each other. And we don’t have that kind of relationship.’

      He squinted his confusion. ‘You do mean something to me, Aimee.’

      She groaned her frustration. ‘I’m not talking about friendship, Sam.’ Lord, could he not hear her?

      He shook his head, as though it might rattle all the pieces together into an understandable shape. ‘Are you saying that you only open up with someone if you’re in a relationship?’

      She just stared at him.

      ‘What? So I’m either in or I’m out?’ he grated. ‘There’s nothing in between?’

      ‘You’re not someone I could let in just a little bit, Sam.’ Please understand what I’m saying.

      Please.

      He blinked at her. ‘I don’t want to be out.’

      So innocent in its utterance, so painful in its intent. ‘But you can’t be in.’

      And finally it dawned in his eyes. What she was trying so hard not to say. He sat back and took a deep, slow breath. ‘This is about Melissa.’

      She flung her hands in the air. ‘Of course it is.’

      ‘You’re keeping a distance because of her?’

      ‘I’m keeping the distance you should be keeping, Sam.’

      That hit him hard. The colour fled from his face. But he didn’t make excuses. He didn’t defend himself. And his next words surprised her. ‘What have they done to you?’

      Two seconds ago he had been under examination. Now he was turning the spotlight on her again. ‘Who?’

      ‘Your family. The men in your past. They’ve made you this all-or-nothing woman. A person who can’t even have friendships without rules. Is that truly the world you come from?’

      ‘They’ve done nothing.’ Though that wasn’t strictly true. Wayne had run off most of her male friends and dressed it up as his great devotion and focus on just being with her. And her father had been the same with her mother up until the day Lisbet Leigh threw his belongings out in the street. Both of those men and the lessons they’d taught her had had an impact on her. ‘I still have values, Sam. They haven’t changed just because I’ve struck out on my own.’ If anything they’d crystallised.

      ‘You pursued this friendship, Aimee.’

      She sighed, because it was true. She had opened the door for all of this that day at the awards ceremony. It had seemed so doable at the time.

      ‘But you’re saying it can only be one-way?’ he went on. ‘Or superficial?’

      God, how could such an intelligent man be so blind? Damn him for making her explain. ‘You have a wife, Sam.’

      He threw his palms up again. ‘I’m not suggesting anything illicit, Aimee. There are degrees. Friends have a different level of intimacy. A different role.’

      Aimee surged to her feet and slapped her fists on the table, leaning across it. ‘Not for me. If I let you in then you will be in. Do you understand me? Is that a complication you want?’

      Sam stared at the dignity and passion in her eyes. He almost chased the conversation to its natural conclusion, followed the white rabbit deep down into the hole, because for one blazing second—yes—he did want that complication. Very much. But Aimee was right: getting closer to her emotionally wasn’t going to do either of them any favours. He should be admiring the strength of her character, or cursing the lack of his own, but all he could think about was that this amazing human being was apparently off-limits to him.

      And, God help him, he wanted to be in.

      ‘So that’s how this has to be? A careful distance between us?’ he said.

      ‘Don’t you think that’s wise?’ Aimee slumped back onto her side of the bench and into the shaft of dappled light streaming down through the tangle of flowers overhead. It made her mop of blonde hair shimmer like a halo, like some angelic being. But all that did was make him feel more like playing the devil.

      ‘No. Not if it means I can’t get to know you.’ She flinched, and he regretted causing it, but Aimee was fast becoming one of the important people in his life and her opting out was not on the cards. ‘I like you, Aimee. I like how you think so differently to me in many ways but on the essential things we’re in tune. I don’t like being told that I can’t be friends with you just because of Melissa.’

      But he didn’t like that he’d referred to the woman he’d married as ‘just’, either. And he really didn’t like the resentment that had started oozing through the moment Melissa had become an obstacle between him and getting to know Aimee better. He frowned internally. He’d been working so hard on managing that ugly, unreasonable side of himself, but apparently it was alive and well.

      Aimee lifted one prosaic brow and the corners of her mouth tightened. ‘It’s not actually your call, Sam, whether I’m friends with you or not, or what kind of a friend I am. If that’s what you’re expecting, then …’

      She leaned down for her own shopping bags and her reach had a tremor in it. Ugh, idiot! She was breaking away from under the controlling thumb of her family and here he was going all caveman on her. He rushed in to undo his damage.

      ‘I