How To Save a Marriage in a Million (6 page)

She smiled. Feeling her confidence return, she realised she now had an out.

‘I only live around the corner and I walked, so you don’t need to worry,’ she said defiantly.

‘That solves the problem. I can walk with you.’

* * *

Maybe it was a culmination of a busy working week, restless nights or possibly a simmering resentment at how easily he’d been persuaded to go public again with his sax playing—whatever the reason, he had become so immersed in the music he hadn’t even noticed Joanna arrive.

What on earth had come over him to result in him playing
that
song?

It was a personal and very private part of a past he’d shared with the woman he was certain he’d carelessly hurt badly. No wonder she’d attempted a hasty exit.

‘It’s not necessary. I told you I only live a street away. I’m quite capable of getting myself home in one piece.’

He wasn’t about to be put off by Joanna’s stubborn tone. Even if she hadn’t stumbled and bumped her head, he firmly believed it wasn’t wise for a woman, and certainly not his Joanna, to walk home alone after dark.

She’d already begun to stride ahead of him and he had to quicken his usual brisk pace to catch up. She was definitely a woman with a mission and her mission that night didn’t include him.

‘I’m only thinking of your safety,’ he said tentatively
when he caught up. Her protests morphed into a stony silence and he wasn’t sure which tactic he liked least. But, thankfully, she wasn’t physically pushing him away and the tears he’d noticed earlier had stopped.

They reached the road at the back of the hospital and stopped at the kerb to wait for traffic to pass. Richard reached out to touch her arm in a gesture he hoped indicated friendship but she shrugged him off.

‘How could you?’ she said softly as she set off to cross the road at a slow run.

He had no words to explain so he remained silent and several tense minutes later Joanna rounded the corner into a softly-lit street of an odd mix of ancient cottages and more modern multi-storey blocks of flats. He was relieved when she stopped at the gate of one of the cottages.

‘This is where I live, so you can go now. I’m quite capable of letting myself in.’

He lingered, not sure how he was going to persuade her to at least let him dress the blood-encrusted wound on her exposed scalp. She’d probably have a decent-sized lump on the back
of her head in the morning and she didn’t have the luxury of a normal head of hair to disguise it.

‘Yes, I know you are, Joanna,’ he said with what he hoped she would interpret as compassion. ‘But…’ It was a difficult decision to make—whether or not to dive in head first and tell her exactly how he felt. He wanted to believe he had nothing to lose but deep down he realised how much was at stake. Joanna didn’t hate him—he knew her well enough to be able to gauge the barometer of her feelings—but he understood how much of an upheaval it must have been to have him land back on her doorstep with little time to prepare herself for the disturbing roller-coaster ride he’d forced her to embark on. He decided to try and compromise.

‘I can only try and understand how difficult it must be for you, me turning up out of the blue.’

‘All the oncology staff were told who was going to take over from Dr Price a couple of weeks after he announced his retirement. It wasn’t a total surprise.’ Her expression softened and she took a sighing breath. ‘I had plenty of time to adjust.’

‘So can I at least be your friend?’

‘It’s not that easy,” she said but he didn’t want to push her.

‘Can we talk inside?’

Richard purposely kept some physical distance between them and hoped Joanna understood he wasn’t trying to encroach on her personal space. He didn’t want to continue their conversation on the pavement, in the dark, though.

She didn’t answer but opened the gate and headed for the pathway running along the side of the building. He began to follow and was relieved she didn’t object.

‘I live in the house on the back half of the block. It fronts a laneway but I come in this way at night.’

Richard took her comment as a sign she had no objection to him coming with her and continued along the path, a couple of steps behind. By the soft light of the remnants of dusk he could just make out the roofline of a small house tucked behind a two-metre-high fibro fence. Joanna made her way to a second gate and left it open once she had gone through as if she’d resigned herself to the fact that he was tagging along, no matter what she did. A light was on, illuminating the small back patio, and she proceeded to unlock
the glass sliding door that led into the rear of her house.

Richard followed her in and glanced around the cluttered living room. There were books piled in a corner, spilling off overloaded shelves. A guitar in a soft case leaned up against the wall next to a music stand holding what looked like a couple of ‘how to play’ books. The homely furniture was comfortably worn in.

‘Sorry about the mess,’ Joanna said as she scooped up a basket of washing and stashed it in what he presumed was a laundry room.

‘What mess?’

Her response to his attempt at humour was a hard-edged glare as she shifted her roomy shoulder-bag from the coffee table to the counter separating the main living area from a small kitchen.

‘Would you like a cup of tea?’

She’d remembered he preferred tea to coffee. It was a small thing but it touched a chord in his heart. She hadn’t blotted out all the memories of their past.

‘I’d love one.’ He paused, wondering if he could penetrate the stubborn resistance she’d demonstrated so far to any help he offered. He decided
to take the hard line. ‘But after we clean up that wound. There’s a fair bit of blood and it’s hard to know what’s underneath. Have you got a first-aid kit?’

‘I’m quite capable of doing it myself,’ she said with a scowl.

The hard line hadn’t worked so he thought he’d try the practical.

‘Maybe if you had eyes in the back of your head. The blood is coming from behind your right ear, so you’d at least need someone to hold a mirror for you. Are you working tomorrow?’ As a last resort he thought he’d try and appeal to her sense of vanity. Cosmetically he would certainly do a better job than her, particularly if there was a significant laceration.

She frowned.

They both stood awkwardly at opposite sides of the room as if it was a stand-off. If only she would relax and realise his sole motive was to help her. He’d do the same for a complete stranger. Well, sort of…

‘At least go and look in the mirror.’

He began to walk towards her and she edged away like a frightened animal that had been cornered.
Was she really so terrified of being alone with him she couldn’t bear him to come near her?

‘Okay, you win. I’ll go and have a look.’

He managed to suppress a gasp as she headed off down a passage that he assumed led to the bedrooms and bathroom. She had a decent-sized haematoma, already an impressive purple colour, on the right side of her occiput and dried blood streaked down her neck. He assumed it would be easy enough to treat the wound but he doubted he could do much to conceal the damage.

He went into the kitchen and opened her freezer, hoping to find something he could improvise as an icepack. His plan was to clean the wound and then apply ice before he attempted any repair work.

‘What exactly do you think you’re doing?’

Joanna had returned.

He thought of saying something flippant, like he had a sudden craving for ice cream, but he knew better. Joanna wasn’t in the mood for jokes.

‘An icepack? Can we use the frozen peas?’

She was standing about two metres away, holding a damp, bloodstained face cloth to the back of her head.

‘Oh…er…yes, okay.’ It wasn’t exactly an apology but a step in the right direction.

‘What’s the verdict? Am I allowed to touch you with my healing hands?’

A hint of a smile crossed her lips and Richard took it as a sign her tension was lessening a little, though he realised he had a long way to go before she’d trust him.

‘You’re right,’ she said, looking everywhere but at his face. ‘It’s a lot worse than I thought and I doubt I could do a decent job on my own.’

Thank God for that
. He had no idea what he would have done if she’d refused.

‘Wise decision. To the bathroom, then.’

He followed her down the passage, past two closed doors he assumed were bedrooms to the bathroom. It was efficiently compact, like everything else in the small house, with room enough for a shower recess and vanity. Mirror tiles, topped with a small fluorescent tube, took up most of the wall above the basin. She flicked on the mirror light, laid a first-aid kit and a hospital dressing pack on the vanity.

‘There’s gauze in the dressing pack, chlorhexidine in a specimen jar and butterfly sutures in the
first-aid kit.’ The simmering tension ramped up a notch but fortunately wasn’t directed at him. ‘I just hope it doesn’t need stitches,’ she added.

‘You’re certainly well prepared,’ he said with a smile, but she’d already turned away from him so he could do his healing work.

‘You can take the face cloth off now.’ He poured antiseptic into the plastic tray and used the disposable forceps to dab a square of gauze into the bright green liquid. ‘Okay if I put a towel over your shoulders?’

Lord, she had beautiful shoulders
. They were softly rounded, lightly tanned…

He checked his errant thoughts in double-quick time. There was no point in dwelling on Joanna’s physical beauty when he’d been treated like an unpleasant though necessary evil as soon as they’d walked through her door.

She reached across for the hand towel next to the vanity and draped it across her upper back as if she’d suddenly become aware of the amount of skin exposed by her strappy singlet top. She was obviously keen for him to get on with the job in hand so she could reclaim her territory.

‘Right, then. This might sting a little.’ Richard rolled out the standard hospital-speak.

She remained silent but he could see her tension as he applied the cool liquid to clean the skin around the wound before discarding it. He doubted his ministrations would be painful so she was most likely responding to his touch. He disposed of the soiled gauze and began cleaning the wound with a fresh swab.

‘It’s only small,’ he said, to reassure himself as much as Joanna. ‘About a centimetre. One butterfly suture should be enough to close the wound and I expect it will be healed in three or four days.’ He ran his fingers over the boggy skin covering the haematoma. ‘The bruising will take longer, though.’ He chuckled. ‘It’s quite a work of art.’

‘Just get on with it.’ Richard could feel her disapproval. ‘Please,’ she added quietly.

* * *

Oh, how Joanna wanted him to hurry up and finish so she could send him packing. The last thing she needed was to experience Richard Howell, one-time husband extraordinaire, up close and personal.

The problem was that her reaction to him had been totally unexpected.

She’d thought she was over him, but she had been wrong.

When she’d seen him at the auditions and then heard
that
song, the memories had been like a bunch of sharp needles pricking her head, trying to penetrate her brain. And she’d managed to ward them off, keep them at an acceptable distance, until Richard insisted he accompany her home.

It wasn’t his fault either. He was just being the same caring, loving, gentle man he’d always been. She was the one who had changed. She’d spent the past three years making a new life for herself with a thickly drawn line separating it from her past. Seeing Richard again meant reliving the deep, unremitting pain of losing their darling son and the cruel way she’d rejected her husband during her grieving. She was the one who’d destroyed their marriage by shrouding herself in a cocoon of sorrow. Richard had done the right thing in leaving her and he deserved a new life too…without her. He had to move on, not live in the past, and for him to achieve some sort of closure she knew she mustn’t let him get close to her.

‘Ouch!’

She was brought back to reality by the sharp pain of strong fingers holding her wound together while the butterfly suture was carefully applied. Richard was leaning close and she could feel the comforting warmth of his steady breathing on her neck.

‘I thought you were going to ice it first.’

‘I changed my mind. The laceration’s smaller than I thought.’

She turned around to face him, being careful not to put any tension on the wound. His eyes twinkled with amusement.

Dangerous
.

He was making it difficult for her to maintain the distance she desperately needed to…To what? To stop herself falling into his comforting arms? To stop the mesmerising look in his eyes from melting her resolve? To stop him from unravelling her tightly ordered world that didn’t have room in it for a man, let alone a man who’d done everything he could to help her through the biggest tragedy in her life, the only thanks he’d had to be coldly rejected.

If there was still a tiny spark of attraction it
was purely physical. He was a very good-looking, sexy man and she’d not shared her bed, in fact she’d not had a boyfriend, since Richard had left. Sex wasn’t the basis of a long-term relationship, though. There had to be commitment, and that was asking the impossible of her. There was no denying her happiest days had been with Richard and Sam but she couldn’t face the prospect of having to relive the anguish when things had gone wrong. She’d been so young. She’d had dreams of a perfect life. Now she knew there were no guarantees of happily ever after, but there were certain precautions she could take to minimise the possibility of being hurt.

She moved away from him.

‘Thanks,’ she said quietly as she collected the debris of the clean-up and placed it in the bin.

‘My pleasure,’ he said, still smiling. ‘I’ll go and make tea, shall I?’

I’ll go and make tea.

The simple statement tripped a switch for Joanna. Tears rolled down her cheeks and she began to sob.

It had always been Richard’s solution when the road had been rough or they’d had a disagreement—to
make a cup of tea, sit down quietly and not make any decisions until they’d at least finished one cup. But she didn’t need to be reminded.