The look he gave her was bitter, angry. ‘He was murdered,’ he said, ‘in cold blood.’
She was barely conscious of the way her hands were twisting into knots. ‘What happened?’ she asked in one of those crime-show-character whispers that usually irritated her so much.
‘My father owned a service station—like Joe Pelleri’s here in the Bay,’ Jacob said. ‘It was a family affair. Mum did the bookwork; I worked there after school and Saturdays.’
‘You don’t have siblings?’ Fran asked.
He shook his head. ‘Nope. There was just me. Mum had a bit of trouble in that department. She’d had about three, it might have even been four, miscarriages before me. Once I arrived safely she decided to quit while she was ahead.’
Fran let the silence stretch, waiting for him to fill it.
He took his time about it. He drove all the way to her sister’s house, parked in the drive and switched off the engine before he turned in his seat to look at her. ‘I’m probably keeping you from something important.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘You’re not. Please…why don’t you come in and have a coffee or something? It’s been a long day and I think I owe you some sort of apology for how I bawled you out the other day. If only I had known…’
‘A coffee sounds great,’ he said, surprising her. Fran had somehow thought he would want to hightail it out of her presence, especially since he had let his guard down, which she suspected he rarely did.
He suited his name. Those piercing blue intelligent eyes of his reminded her of a bird of prey, looking down as he rode the thermal currents that elevated him above the rest of the world, patiently assessing when it was time to strike.
Fran was conscious of how dusty and dirty she was as she led him into the house, conscious too of how his presence behind her made her limp seem more of a disfigurement than normal. One of the first things she had noticed about him had been his long, strong legs, the way they’d strode across the ground with purpose, the way they’d hugged his powerful motorbike, the way he’d stood without a hint of a wobble in his stance.
‘Do you mind if I take a minute to freshen up?’ she asked, hoping she wasn’t blushing as much as she felt she was.
‘No problem,’ he said, bending down to scratch Rufus’s ears. He had bounded up to greet him with his ebullient personality
on show. ‘This boy here looks like he needs a run. I’ll be back in ten.’
‘Right…’ Fran said, wondering why her heart was playing leapfrog as she watched him leave the house, with Rufus bounding excitedly at his side.
‘Stop it,’ she said in an undertone, turning towards the bathroom. ‘Stop it right now. You’re not yourself right now. You don’t even know what you want to do with your life, much less who you want to spend it with. Just stop it.’
Jacob didn’t need to find a ball to throw. Rufus did that part for him, coming up to him with it in his smiling mouth, his plumy tail slashing from side to side in glee. Jacob grimaced as he took the slimy and ragged tennis ball from the dog’s mouth, and then threw it as far as he could, watching as the mutt bounded off, ears flapping as the ball rolled down the embankment into the wild part of the garden.
The sun was still warm and another storm seemed to be brewing. He could feel the tension in the air, or maybe he was kidding himself. Maybe it was the tension he could feel in his body every time he was near the little pint-sized blonde doctor who didn’t want to be a doctor any more. Apart from the near disaster at the Pelleris’, Fran had handled Candi’s emergency with the sort of calm competence this town needed. She was exactly what Pelican Bay needed. Hell, maybe she was exactly what
he
needed right now.
But did he really want to get entangled with a woman who was prepared to throw away her career on a whim? As far as he was concerned, a broken leg sustained while on a skiing holiday was no excuse for walking away from a profession that was in such demand these days. A huge amount of public money had been invested in her education, and for her to walk
away from it seemed almost criminal. But maybe she was one of those shallow types, a member of Generation X or Y or whatever it was called these days, who wanted to flit from place to place on a permanent holiday, not unlike his ex, Melissa. He didn’t know much about Fran’s background but he could see there was no shortage of money. She drove a top-end car with all the safety features, and her clothes were high-street fashion—and she wore them well, he had to admit. She wore a bikini and a sarong even better. He could still see her sexy figure in that filmy shroud—the image was burned at the back of his eyeballs. Every day since, he had dreamed of peeling it off her to reveal what was underneath.
Rufus came back with the ball in his mouth, his tail wagging proudly.
‘You want me to throw this again?’ Jacob asked.
Rufus dropped the ball and, wriggling his back end, barked in reply.
Jacob smiled and, bending down, picked up the salivasodden ball and threw it down the pathway to the beach. ‘Go get it, boy,’ he said, and then, taking his own advice, turned and went back to the house.
Fran looked at herself in the mirror and grimaced. A quick shower had removed the dust and grime but it had done nothing about the shadows under her eyes. Her hair was in limp strands over her back and shoulders, but it would take at least twenty minutes to dry it.
Hmm…Twenty minutes with a hand-held hairdryer when she could be spending the same time with the best-looking man she had seen since…well since for ever. Anton Leeton, her expart-time boyfriend, was no billboard model but he was certainly no reason to reach for the soothing eyedrops either.
In the end Fran came out dressed in one of her sister’s sundresses. That was one of the best things about having a sister, especially a recently pregnant one who had a whole wardrobe of designer clothes that were currently useless.
Jacob turned to face her as she came in, his eyes sweeping over her in a blood-heating manner. ‘Wow, that was a quick change,’ he said. ‘I can’t promise the same transformation but if I could at least remove your sister’s dog’s saliva from my hands I might be able to turn myself into presentable company.’
Fran’s lips flickered with a smile as she waved an arm towards the bathroom. ‘It’s all yours,’ she said. ‘I’ll put some coffee on.’
‘Sounds great.’
While the coffee was brewing Fran took the cake she had baked for her sister…had it only been the day before? It seemed like so much had happened in the short time since she had creamed the butter and sugar and carefully folded in the flour.
Her sister was now a mother, a young toddler’s life had been saved and a young teenager was now on her way to hospital with a leg that would mend a whole lot sooner than her heart, if she was any judge.
Jacob came out just as she was placing the pink iced coconut cake on a pretty flowery plate she had given Caro for her thirtieth birthday.
‘Mmm, that coffee smells good,’ he said. ‘And is that cake home baked?’
‘Sure is,’ Fran said, pushing a cup and plate across the island bench towards him. ‘My mother is a hospitality teacher at high school. She was pretty adamant Carolyn and I learn how to cook from a young age. I used to hate it when I was forced to do it, but now I’m glad she persisted with it. I find
baking relaxing, although it’s no fun baking for just one person.’
His eyes met hers across the bench. ‘So when you’re not skiing in New Zealand or visiting your sister, you live alone?’
Fran snagged her lip with her teeth and concentrated on stirring her coffee, which, because she didn’t take sugar or milk was rather a superfluous thing to do. She wondered if he would notice. Cops were pretty good at that sort of thing. ‘Yes,’ she said, putting down the teaspoon with a little ping on the bench. ‘I live alone.’
‘You’re right about the cooking-for-one-person thing,’ he said, raising his cup to his lips and taking a sip.
Fran cradled her cup in her hands as she looked at him. How could a man look so sexy just drinking coffee? she wondered. In fact, how could a man look so damned sexy in a police uniform that in spite of his quick clean-up was still dusty and a little crumpled?
‘Oh?’ she said, trying to keep track of the conversation while her mind was conjuring up images of him without his uniform, like the day she had seen him on the beach, tanned and glistening, those long, strong muscular legs powering through the sand…
‘Yeah,’ he said, putting his cup down to take the slice of cake she’d placed on a plate for him. ‘I’ve been on my own now for five months and three days. Don’t know the hours but that’s close enough.’
‘Is that the sound of a heart that hasn’t quite mended?’ Fran asked.
He gave her a twisted smile. ‘No, that’s the sound of a man who is relieved he doesn’t have to answer to someone day in day out. I lock people up all the time, Dr Nin. Call it hypocritical of me but I don’t like it when someone does it to me.’
‘Your…er…wife was the possessive type?’
‘Melissa and I were dating, not married. That was my choice, not hers. She wanted the whole shebang, the big society wedding, the two-point-one kids and the nine-to-five husband.’
He paused for a beat or two before he went on, ‘I’m a cop. There’s no such thing as nine-to-five criminals, or for that matter nine-to-five emergencies. Even if I took a desk job there would be times when duty would have to take priority. And in any case, I wanted to spend some time on the coast with my mother. That was the hammer that drove the last nail in the coffin of our relationship. Melissa didn’t want to share me with a dying woman and I refused to compromise.’
Fran took a sip of her coffee and wondered if his casual I’m-over-it attitude was covering deeper hurt. Men were often hard to read emotionally. Showing vulnerability was a no-no, particularly in Australian men, and particularly in cops.
‘So you live on your own here at Pelican Bay?’ she asked.
‘Yes, in a house further down the beach from here,’ he said. ‘It’s pretty secluded. You can see it from the rock pools if you know what you’re looking for. It’s on the top of the cliff.’
‘You must have great views.’
The corner of his mouth twitched slightly. ‘Sometimes the view is better than others.’
Fran dropped her gaze, wondering if he had seen her on the beach more than once. She had often taken a book down and sat under the spindly sheoak trees near the rock pools. Once, only a couple of days ago, she had taken her bikini top off so she could feel the sun warming her naked flesh. Caro had assured her it was totally private, that hardly anyone came along and if they did you could see them for miles and had time to cover up.
‘Nice cake,’ Jacob said, brushing some crumbs onto his plate.
‘Thank you,’ Fran said, feeling a blush steal over her cheeks. God, she was so pathetic, clutching at the slightest compliment as if it might be the last she’d ever get. ‘Um…would you like another slice?’
‘No, thanks, but another coffee would be good.’
She poured him another cup and passed him the milk and sugar, watching as he spooned in two and a half teaspoons and a generous dash of milk.
‘You didn’t finish telling me what happened to your father,’ she said.
His expression clouded as it had in the car earlier and she noticed his grip on his coffee mug tightened. ‘It was an armed robbery,’ he said, putting his mug on the bench as if he was afraid he was going to snap its handle. ‘My father was on his own that evening. Two men came in and one cleaned out the till and the other shot my father. He would have lived but by the time help arrived it was too late to save him.’
Fran felt a shudder of horror go through her. ‘I’m so sorry. How dreadful for you and your poor mother to lose him that way.’
‘Yeah,’ he said, picking up his cup and looking at the contents for a moment. ‘It was.’
‘Is that why you became a police officer?’ she asked.
‘One of the reasons,’ he said, and then after a small silence asked, ‘Have you given any thought to my suggestion?’
‘What suggestion was that?’ Fran asked, even though she knew and had been silently dreading this conversation ever since they had left Candi Broderick and her father with the Careflight crew.
‘Filling in at the clinic for an hour or two,’ he said, holding her gaze with magnetic force.
Fran finally dragged her gaze away and toyed with the barely touched cake on her plate, squishing a crumb beneath the pad of her index finger as if it was a tiny ant. ‘It’s not that simple, Sergeant…‘
He didn’t speak, which she knew was a clever tactic to keep her talking. She’d seen enough crime shows to know how it worked. She would start out determined to keep her mouth closed, but the silence would grow teeth that would gnaw at her until she began to fidget. And he would stand there, like he was doing now, his arms folded against his broad chest, his hips leaning back against the kitchen bench, silently watching her with his I’ve-got-all-the-time-in-the-world pose. And then she would blurt out everything, all the hurt, all the shame of not being able to cope, the sheer terror of reliving it all. And then the nightmares would begin again, and then the panic attacks, and the zombie-like days when it was all she could do to get out of bed, let alone out of the house.
Fran pulled her shoulders back, her neck protesting as she locked gazes with him. ‘I’m not prepared to commit myself to anything until I have thought it through. I am supposed to be having an extended holiday as well as looking after my sister. I haven’t even visited her in hospital yet. Pelican Bay will have to do without me, Sergeant Hawke, as I have other priorities right now.’
Fran was proud of her speech. She had made it sound so in control and assured, so nothing-you-can-say-will-sway-me. But then he came around the island bench where she was standing and stood right in front of her, invading her personal space, making every shallow breath she took bring her breasts almost into intimate contact with his chest. She had never been more acutely aware of her body or, in fact, anyone else’s.
Every nerve was jangling, fizzing with sensation beneath her skin. Her nostrils filled with the primal male scent of him, the warmth of his body and the late-day perspiration that should have repelled her but for some reason did exactly the opposite.