The Man with the Locked Away Heart

‘First time in the bush?’ she asked.

His dark eyes glinted. ‘Does it show?’

‘A bit,’ she said. ‘But, then, I can’t talk. It took me weeks to get used to everything. Time is slower out here. No one rushes unless they have to. It was frustrating at first but after a while you get used to it. Would you prefer red or white wine?’

‘Red if you have it, but white is fine if not.’

‘I’ll … er … get some from the cellar,’ she said, putting her wooden spoon down with a little thud.

‘You have a cellar?’

‘It’s not mine—I mean, I didn’t have it put in or anything,’ Gemma explained. ‘It’s been here since the house was first built. In a climate as hot as this, it’s too warm upstairs to keep good wines.’

‘Mind if I come with you?’ he asked.

Gemma would have refused his offer, except she absolutely loathed going down to the cellar. Gladys had always gone down there in the past, and then, when she had not been well enough to do so, Rob Foster, the handyman-cum-gardener, had always brought wine up for Gemma on the rare occasions she’d wanted it. The dark dank atmosphere of the cellar made her flesh crawl. It hadn’t helped that on the first and only occasion she had gone down there alone a mouse had scuttled across the earthen floor right in front of her feet.

‘Sure, why not?’ she said, carefully disguising her relief. ‘I might need your help in any case to lift up the trapdoor. It’s over here at the back of the kitchen.’

Sergeant Di Angelo took over the opening of the trapdoor, lifting it as if it was a sheet of cardboard instead of solid timber with iron hinges. Gemma found the light switch and then she hesitated.

‘Is something wrong?’ he asked after a moment.

‘Um—no,’ she said, taking a deep breath and fixing her gaze on the sandstone steps.

‘I’m happy to go first,’ he offered. ‘There might be spiders down there.’

Gemma felt her pride take a dive. ‘Actually, that would be great,’ she said with a tremulous smile. ‘I’m not all that fond of spiders.’

She stood at the top of the steps as he went down and then once he’d given the all-clear she followed, but she stayed on the last step. ‘I think the red stuff is over here,’ she said, pointing vaguely to the left-hand side of the cellar.

Marc Di Angelo looked at her. ‘Are you claustrophobic?’

Gemma rubbed her upper arms with her crossed-over hands. ‘A bit, I guess.’

‘You go back up,’ he said. ‘I’ll get the bottle of wine. Is there any one in particular I should or shouldn’t take?’

‘No, just whatever,’ she said, scooting back up the steps and hovering at the top. ‘I don’t think there’s any Grange Hermitage or Hill of Grace down there.’

‘You never know,’ he said dryly, and bent at the waist to check out the labels as he pulled out various bottles.

Gemma couldn’t stop looking at the way his jeans hugged his taut behind, or the way the muscles of his arms were so well formed. She was used to seeing wellused muscles out here in the Outback. The men were all toned from hard work on the land, but something about Marc Di Angelo’s body made her feminine senses switch into overload. He was so damned attractive. Those eyes of his, so dark, like rich chocolate, and those lips of his, so sensual, and that strong, uncompromising jaw that gave him that don’t-mess-with-me air.

Her insides did a funny little dance as he came back up the steps, carrying a bottle of wine. ‘Here you go,’ he said, handing her the bottle. ‘I’ll put the trapdoor back down.’

She watched as he closed the trapdoor, again lifting it as if it was a diet wafer before shooting home the bolt. ‘So,’ she said with an overly bright smile as she clutched the wine against her middle, ‘no spiders?’

‘None that I could see,’ he said, dusting his hands off on his thighs.

She bit her lip. ‘Um—you’ve got dust on your forehead.’

He wiped the back of his hand across his forehead. ‘Gone?’

She shook her head. ‘No, it’s still there.’ She balanced the wine with one hand as she pointed with the other to just above his left eyebrow. ‘There.’

He gave his face another wipe but he somehow still missed the mark. ‘All gone?’

Gemma felt his eyes lock on hers. The space between them was suddenly no space at all. He was standing so close she could see the darker circle of his black pupils in those incredibly brown eyes. She could even see the pinpoints of stubble on his jaw, the way it outlined every masculine contour of his face—his forceful chin, his firm upper lip, his fuller lower lip and the slopes and indentation of his lean cheeks. She could smell his cleanly showered smell. She could smell man and citrus rolled into one, fresh and sharp and dangerously tempting. Her breath hitched to a halt in her chest. Her mouth went dry. Her heart started to hammer and her legs felt strangely unsupportive.

‘Here,’ he said, and handed her a clean and folded handkerchief from his pocket. ‘You do it.’

Gemma swallowed as her fingers curled around the fabric. Still clutching the wine to her chest, she lifted her other hand and wiped at the smear of dust on his forehead. Touching him, even through fabric, was like touching a live wire. She felt the kickback right up her arm. He must have felt something too for she saw his nostrils flare like those of a stallion and her heart gave another little stumble. ‘I—I think that’s it,’ she said, in a voice that sounded like she was about fifteen years old.

‘Thanks,’ he said, stuffing the handkerchief into his back pocket.

Why doesn’t he move? Gemma thought. She had nowhere to go; she was practically up against the wall in any case.

‘Is there anything I can do to help with dinner?’ he asked.

She suddenly remembered the simmering pilaf she had left unattended. ‘Oh, my gosh,’ she said, and thrust the wine at him. ‘You open this while I check on the chicken. There’s a corkscrew in the second drawer.’

‘This one’s a screw top,’ Marc said.

‘Oh, right.’ She gave him a flustered sort of look as she lifted the lid on the dish she was making.

The smell of chicken and rice and Moroccan spices filled the air and Marc felt his stomach rumble in anticipation. The salad sandwich and instant coffee he had picked up at a roadhouse three hundred kilometres out of Jingilly Creek seemed like a long time ago.

But then his whole life seemed a long time ago.

That’s how he saw things now: before and after. He was stuck in the after and there was no way he could replay his decisions and stay in the before, even though everything in him wished he 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?’