The Returning Hero (20 page)

Her brows lifted. ‘Does it matter?’

He loosened his tie a tiny bit more. ‘Not at all. But some people get fixated on titles so I always like to get them straight.’

‘I prefer Ms.’

Which told him precisely nothing at all. When he met her gaze, she laughed. Sparkling green eyes momentarily dazzled him. ‘You first,’ she dared.

A question like that would normally have him sitting up straighter. Instead he found himself chuckling and relaxing back into his seat even more. ‘Single. Most definitely single. Never been married; hence, never been divorced and not currently in a relationship.’

‘Ditto,’ she said.

‘So, are you moving back home? Is Newcastle where you grew up?’

‘No.’

Her face shuttered closed—not completely but in a half-fan—and he bit back a sigh. False start number one.

A moment’s silence ensued and then she turned to him with a smile that was too bright. ‘Is your campaign going well?’

He bit back a curse. Was that all people could think to converse with him about—his darn job? ‘Yes.’

Another moment’s silence. False start number two. For pity’s sake, he was good at small talk. He opened his mouth. He closed it again. The deep heaviness in his chest grew. Normally he could push it away, ignore it, but today it gave him no quarter. It was this stupid plane strike and the break in his routine. It had given him time to think.

Thinking wouldn’t help anything!

She glanced at him, her face sober, and he knew then that she was going to bring up the subject he most dreaded. He wanted to beg her not to, but years of
good
breeding prevented him.

‘How are you and your parents now, since your brother…?’

That was a different approach to most, but…The heaviness started to burn and ache. He rested his head back against his seat and tried to stop his lip from curling.

‘I’m sorry. Don’t answer that. It was a stupid thing to ask. Grieving in public must be harrowing. I just wanted to say I’m truly sorry for your loss, Aidan.’

The simple words with their innate sincerity touched him and the burn in his chest eased a fraction. ‘Thank you, Quinn.’

Two beats passed. Quinn shuffled in her seat a little and her ponytail bounced. ‘I’m moving to an olive farm.’

He straightened and turned to her. ‘An olive farm?’

‘Uh-huh.’ She kept her eyes on the road, but she was grinning. ‘I bet that’s not a sentence you hear every day, is it?’

‘It’s not a sentence I have ever heard uttered in my life.’

‘It’s probably not as startling as saying I was moving to an alpaca farm or going to work on a ferret breeding programme. But it’s only a degree or two behind.’

She’d made things good—or, at least, better—just like that. With one abrupt and startling admission. ‘What do you know about olives?’

She lifted her nose in the air. ‘I know that marinated olives on a cheese platter is one of life’s little pleasures.’

He laughed. She glanced at him and her eyes danced. ‘What about you; what do you know about olives?’

‘That they grow on trees. That they make olive oil. And that marinated olives on a cheese platter is one of life’s little pleasures.’

She laughed then too and he couldn’t remember a sound he’d ever enjoyed more. He closed his eyes all the better to savour it. It was the last thing he remembered.

* * *

Aidan sat bolt upright and glanced around. He was alone in the car. He peered at his watch.

He closed his eyes and shook his right arm, but when he opened them again the time hadn’t changed. He’d slept for two hours?

He pressed his palms to his eyes and dragged in a breath before stretching to the right and then the left to ease the cricks in his back and neck. Finally he took stock of his surroundings. Quinn had parked beneath a huge old gum tree to give him shade. At the moment she, Robbie and Chase kicked a ball around on a big oval in front of him. She’d hitched her dress up to mid-thigh into a pair of bike shorts.

His eyes widened. Man, she was…fit!

He shook his head and pressed fingers to his eyes again.

With bones that literally creaked, he pushed out of the car and stretched. Warm air caressed his skin and he slid his suit jacket off to lay it on the front seat. Quinn waved and then pointed behind him to an amenities block. ‘They’re clean and well maintained,’ she called out.

He lifted a hand to let her know he’d heard.

When he returned he found her sitting cross-legged on a blanket at the edge of the oval beside an assortment of bags.

‘Where are we?’

‘Wundowie.’

He pulled out his smart phone and searched for it on the Internet. ‘We’ve been travelling…’

‘Nearly two and a half hours, though we’re still only about an hour out of Perth. There was a lot of traffic,’ she said in answer to his raised eyebrow. ‘And there was some mini-marathon we had to be diverted around.’ She shrugged. ‘It all took time. Would you like a sandwich or an apple?’ She opened a cooler bag and proffered its contents towards him. ‘Or water? There’s plenty here.’

He reached for a bottle of water. ‘Thank you, I’m parched.’

‘But well rested,’ she said with a laugh.

His hand clenched about the water bottle, making the plastic crackle. ‘You should’ve woken me.’

She turned from watching the boys as they continued with their game. ‘Why?’

He opened his mouth. He closed it again and rubbed the nape of his neck. ‘I, uh… It wasn’t very polite.’

‘It wasn’t impolite. You were obviously tired and needed the sleep.’

She selected an apple and crunched into it. ‘Please eat something. It’ll only go to waste and I hate that.’

He took a sandwich. Ham and pickle. ‘Thank you.’ And tried to remember the last time he’d let his guard down so comprehensively as to fall asleep when he hadn’t meant to.

It certainly hadn’t happened since Daniel had died.

His appetite fled. Nevertheless he forced himself to eat the sandwich. He wouldn’t be able to stand the fuss his mother would make if he became ill. And this woman beside him had gone to the trouble of making these sandwiches for her children and herself and had chosen to share them with him. The least he could do was appreciate it.

He and Quinn sat side by side on the grass with their legs stretched out in front of them. They didn’t speak much. A million questions pounded through him, but they were all far too personal and he had no right to ask a single one of them.

But the inactivity grated on him. It didn’t seem to have that effect on Quinn, though. She lifted her face to the sky and closed her eyes as if relishing the sun and the day and the air. Eventually she jumped up again. ‘I’m going to have another run with the boys for a bit. Stretch my legs. Feel free to join in.’

He glanced down at himself. ‘I’m not exactly dressed for it.’

She took in his tie, his tailored trousers and polished leather shoes. ‘No,’ she agreed and he couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt so summarily dismissed. ‘Oh, I meant to tell you earlier that we’re only going as far as Merredin today,’ she shot over her shoulder before racing off towards the boys.

He looked Merredin up on his smart phone. A quick calculation informed him it was only another two hours further on. Surely they could travel further than that in a day? He scowled and started answering email. He might as well do something useful. He made phone calls.

They stayed in Wundowie for another thirty minutes. He chafed to be away the entire time but was careful not to keep glancing at his watch. If they were only going as far as Merredin they’d be there mid-afternoon as it was. An additional half an hour in Wundowie either way wouldn’t much matter.

* * *

Aidan would’ve liked to have kept working when they were back in the car, but he suspected Quinn would consider that bad manners.

He dragged a hand through his hair. What was he thinking? Of course it’d be bad manners. Besides, she and the boys had kept quiet so he could sleep and it hardly seemed fair to continue to expect such ongoing consideration. Especially when they were doing him a favour.

The fact his phone battery was running low decided it. He tucked it away and glanced around to the back seat. ‘Do you boys play a sport?’

‘Soccer,’ said Robbie.

‘Robbie is the best runner on his team,’ Chase said.

Quinn glanced at him. ‘He means fastest.’

Robbie’s mouth turned down. ‘I mightn’t be in my new team.’

Quinn tensed. Aidan tried not to wince. He hadn’t meant to tread into sensitive territory. ‘Uh…’ He searched for something to say.

‘Do you play sport?’ Robbie asked.

‘Not any more.’ And all of a sudden his heart felt heavy as a stone again.

‘Why are you on the television?’ Chase demanded to know. ‘Mum said she’d seen you.’

‘Because of my job. I’m a politician so I go on television to tell people how I’d run the country if they vote for me.’

Robbie frowned. ‘Do you like your job?’

A bitter taste lined his mouth. ‘Sure I do.’

‘What do you do?’

‘Well, I go into my office most days and I go to lots of meetings and…’ Endless meetings. It took an effort of will to keep the tiredness out of his voice. ‘I go on the television and talk on the radio and talk to newspaper reporters so they can tell all the people about the things I think would make our country run better. I have people who work for me and we draft up proposals for new policies.’

‘Wouldn’t being a fireman be more fun?’

‘A fireman would be excellent fun,’ he agreed. Lord, his mother would have a fit! He almost laughed.

‘When you’re finished being a politician maybe you could be a fireman,’ Chase said.

‘And then you could play soccer too,’ added Robbie.

He didn’t know how those two things were linked. He glanced at Quinn for direction. She merely smiled at him.

‘Mum, can we play one of our CDs now?’

‘I did promise the boys we’d play one of our CDs on this leg of our journey. We burned a few especially.’

‘I don’t mind.’ It’d save him searching for topics of conversation.

‘We sing pretty loud.’

‘You don’t need to apologise about that.’

For some reason that made her grin. ‘You haven’t heard our singing yet.’

He forced himself to smile.

She slipped a CD into the player. ‘The Purple People-Eater’ immediately blasted from the speakers and his three companions burst into loud accompaniment, the boys laughing throughout most of the song. That was followed by ‘Llama Llama Duck’ and then ‘My Boomerang Won’t Come Back’.

He stared at her. ‘You have to be joking me?’

‘Fun novelty songs are our favourite.’ Her grin was so wide it almost split her face. ‘If there’s a doo-wop or chirpy-chirpy-cheep-cheep to be had then we love it.’

Hell, that was what this was. Absolute hell. He slunk down in his seat and stared straight out in front of him as the songs came at him in a relentless round. ‘This isn’t music!’ He glared at the road. ‘You could’ve warned me about this back in Perth.’ No way would he have got into the car with her then.

Then he thought of his mother.

Quinn merely sang, ‘I’m a yummy, tummy, funny, lucky gummy bear,’ with extra gusto.

He closed his eyes, but this time sleep eluded him.

Copyright (c) 2014 by Michelle Douglas

ISBN-13: 9781460327449

THE RETURNING HERO

Copyright (c) 2014 by Soraya Lane

All rights reserved. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

(r) and TM are trademarks of the publisher. Trademarks indicated with (r) are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Trade Marks Office and in other countries.

www.Harlequin.com