One Baby Step at a Time

‘You shouldn’t come here on your own—you never know who might be around.’

Nick’s appearance startled her.

‘Obviously!’ she snapped at him.

But as he ignored her comment and fell into stride beside her, she knew all the good of her run had vanished, and with it her peace of mind.

It’s only Nick, she told herself, but that didn’t seem to stop the awareness that prickled in her skin all down one side—the side closest to her jogging companion.

Veering away from him, she headed for the water and dived from ankle depth into the clear, green-blue sea, surfacing to breathe then diving again to porpoise along parallel to the beach, relishing the silken kiss of the water against her skin.

Had she always been this gorgeous?

Long, lean, and tanned in a way redheads weren’t supposed to tan?

Nick watched as she dived and surfaced in the water, only to dive again, her limbs flashing in the sunlight, her hair trailing behind her—a mermaid at play.

Was it because she’d always been a friend that he’d never seen her as a woman? Not that he could afford to see her that way now—they were friends! There’d be plenty of interesting and intelligent, even beautiful, women here in Willowby. It was only a matter of connecting up with some of them, and the thoughts he found himself having about Bill would disappear.

For all she joked about having escaped a fate worse than death when she’d dumped Nigel, she was the kind of woman who should be married—married with a tribe of red-headed kids clustered around her—because she’d always been a mother hen, adopting not only him but any fellow pupil in danger of being bullied or excluded from one of the childhood gangs.

He stripped down to his jocks and dived into the water, surfacing a little distance from her, uncertain enough about the strange reactions of the night to not want to be too close.

‘Race you to the rocks,’ she challenged, and started immediately, but his longer strokes and stronger kick soon had him catching up, so they swam together towards the smooth, rounded rocks that jutted into the water at the end of the bay until they were close enough for him to swim away, beating her by a body length.

Strange reactions or not, he wasn’t going to let her beat him!

‘Oh, that was good,’ she said, coming up out of the water, her hair streaming down her back. ‘I find it’s so much easier to sleep during the day if I have a run and a swim before I go home.’

She looked at him for a moment, her golden-brown eyes assessing.

‘And a hearty breakfast at the surf club back at the main beach. You up for that, or has your body become a temple so you can’t eat delicious crispy bacon, and beef sausages, and fried tomatoes, and all the other things that are loaded with cholesterol and fat?’

Nick shook his head in disbelief.

‘So you still eat like a navvy and stay as slim as a whip. Some metabolism you de Grootes inherited.’

‘Not all of us,’ Bill told him, smiling as she waded in front of him back to the beach. ‘Bob’s developed a most unsightly paunch, and Joel’s heading in the same direction. Too many business lunches and not enough exercise, that’s the problem with those two.’

Nick watched the way her butt moved as she walked in front of him and tried to think of Bill’s brothers rather than how those twin globes would fit into his hands.

‘Have you already moved into the apartment?’

She threw the question over her shoulder but it brushed right past him, his attention snaffled by the way the woman in front of him moved, and how her breasts hung low as she bent to retrieve her T-shirt from the sand, the bikini she wore barely covering her nipples.

‘Nick?’

Had she caught him watching her as she turned, her eyebrows raised as she waited for a reply?

What had she asked?

Had he moved in …?

‘If you call dumping a couple of suitcases in the bedroom and unpacking my wash bag as moving in, then yes,’ he responded, hoping the gap between the question and the answer hadn’t been too long. ‘It’s fully furnished so all I had to bring were clothes and personal stuff. I’d hardly begun to unpack when the hospital phoned to ask if I could work last night.’

Bill didn’t respond, so disturbed was she by the sight of Nick’s lean, toned body that casual conversation was beyond her. He’d shrugged as he’d mentioned unpacking, an unfortunate movement as it had drawn her attention back to his chest, with its flat wedges of pectoral muscles and clearly defined six-pack.

She wanted to ask if he’d been working out, but that would give away the fact she’d noticed and the way she was feeling it was better if the question went unasked.

She climbed the first dune and raced down the other side then up the next, aware he was pacing himself to stay beside her—aware of him!

It was bad enough that he was living in the same building, so now she’d have to avoid seeing him out of work hours as well as at work, without him suspecting she might see him as other than a friend.

A passing fancy, surely?

But her reactions to him were forgotten as she topped the last dune.

‘What is that?’

The words burst from her lips as she saw the racing-green sports car, hood down, cream leather seats, sleek lines shouting speed and, yes, seduction.

‘My car?’ His voice was quiet but she heard the pride in it.

‘Well, that will get you noticed in Willowby,’ she muttered, aware of just who would notice it first—the constant stream of beautiful women who used Willowby as a jumping-off place for reef adventures. True, they worked, if you could call hostessing on luxury yachts or on the six-star island resorts working, but since the mining boom had led to the town becoming one of the wealthiest per capita in the country, the place had been swamped by women, and men if she was honest, looking to separate some of that money from those who had it.

‘Gets me noticed most places,’ Nick replied, and the smile on his face made her stomach clench.

That’s why he’d bought it! She knew that much immediately, remembering the email he’d sent her many years ago when he’d returned from his first stint with the army reserve, serving overseas. He’d helped to put back together young men blown apart by bombs in wars that ordinary people didn’t understand.

He’d come home, he’d said, with one aim—to live for the day. He’d promised himself a beautiful car, the best of clothes and as many beautiful women as cared to play with him. ‘I’m honest with them, Bill,’ he’d said in the email. ‘I tell them all it’s not for ever, that marriage isn’t in my long-term plans. You’d be surprised how many women are happy with that—even agreeing that it’s not for them either. Things are different now.’

Were they? Bill hadn’t been able to answer that question then and couldn’t now. For herself, she knew she wanted marriage, and children too, but not without love and so far, apart from that one disastrous experience, love hadn’t come along.

‘Ride with me,’ Nick suggested. ‘I’ll drop you back at your old bomb after breakfast.’

‘Ride in that thing? The town might have grown, Nick, but at heart it’s still the same old Willowby. I only need to be spotted by one of the local gossips and my reputation would be ruined. Did you see the de Groote girl, they’d be saying, running around in a fast car with a fast man? You, of course, will be forgiven. About you they’ll say, hasn’t he done well for himself, that grandson of old Mrs Grant? And such a kind boy, coming home to be with his gran now she’s getting on.’

Nick laughed and headed for his car.

‘Okay, but I won’t offer to race you to the surf club,’ he teased. ‘Too unfair.’

Bill climbed into her battered old four-wheel drive, the vehicle her father had bought her new when she’d passed her driving test. She patted the dash to reassure the car she wasn’t put off by its shabby appearance, or influenced by the shining beauty of Nick’s vehicle, but it was she who needed reassurance as her folly in suggesting he breakfast with her finally struck home. Even with her sea-drenched curls, and the tatty old T-shirt, she’d always felt quite at home at the surf club, but these days many of the beautiful people breakfasted there as well—

Whoa! Surely she wasn’t concerned that Nick would compare her to some of the other women and find her wanting?

Of course she wasn’t!

Then why was she wondering if there might not be a long shift somewhere in the mess of clothes, books and papers in the back seat of the car—wondering if there might be a slightly melted tube of lip gloss in the glove box?