A Weekend To Remember. Miranda Lee

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СКАЧАТЬ last weekend off work to be with her. Unheard of for Jack to do that!

      ‘I must admit it is strange, though,’ he added, frowning, ‘not being able to remember anything about this new intimacy of ours. Damned annoying, actually. I wish I could remember our first time together. I feel I’ve missed out on something really special.’

      Hannah could feel his eyes moving over her, and she blushed fiercely.

      ‘Yes, I’m sure it was very special,’ he said slowly, the ‘very’ seeming to slide down her spine, making her skin break out in goosebumps under her clothes.

      Hannah was stunned. She had honestly never considered Jack thinking of her in a sexual context before, and the knowledge that he did was sending her into a spin. She hadn’t thought of him in that context either, but suddenly she was very aware of him sitting in the car beside her. His size. His strength. His maleness.

      She felt flustered and flattered at the same time.

      It had been so long since any man had paid this kind of attention to her—so long since she’d thought of herself as a desirable woman. Dwight had eroded her confidence in her sexuality over the years. Whereas Jack, with his repeated assertions tonight about fancying her, and his hot gaze now roving over her, was very definitely revitalising her self-esteem in that regard.

      A startling train of thought jumped into Hannah’s mind and she sucked in a sharp breath. Jack believes you’re his fiancee. He believes you’re already lovers. Maybe he’ll expect you to go to bed with him tonight as a matter of course?

      Dear heavens, she hadn’t thought of that!

      There she’d been, imagining that she would only have to tuck him into bed, bring hot cocoa and generally play nursemaid till his memory came back. She had never contemplated having to fend off a very virile male who already believed he’d been to bed with her and was wanting to relive what he thought he’d missed.

      Hannah had to nip this potential complication in the bud, so to speak, before it blossomed into a full-blown problem.

      ‘If you don’t mind, Jack,’ she said awkwardly. ‘Till you get your memory back, I’d prefer us to resume the relationship we used to have as just secretary and boss. I don’t think I’d feel comfortable with anything else just now—what with your not remembering anything about our…er…new intimacy.’

      ‘Really? Well, I guess I can understand that, but I sure hope I get my memory back soon,’ he muttered testily.

      Amen to that, Hannah prayed.

      ‘The doctor said your memory could come back at any time,’ she said soothingly.

      ‘The sooner the better,’ he grumbled.

      A silence descended in the car, which suited Hannah. She was approaching the turn-off, and had to concentrate. Was it around this corner or the next? She wished it would stop raining. It was hard enough to spot in the daytime in fine weather.

      The car rounded the corner and, yes, there was the turn-off. Relieved to have done with the highway, Hannah still had to slow appreciably as she turned on to the narrow and bumpy dirt track which led down to the cottage.

      The headlights tunnelled through the sleety darkness, showing puddle-filled potholes plus the closeness of the encroaching bushland. They picked up a pair of glassy eyes up in a tree as the road turned. A possum, probably, Hannah thought. Not a koala. Koalas weren’t at all nocturnal.

      ‘What an isolated place,’ Jack said.

      ‘Actually, we do have several neighbours, but their homes are set back from the road and you just can’t see them through the bush.’

      ‘Is the cottage heated? If it isn’t, we’ll freeze to death.’

      ‘It has two efficient combustion heaters built into the old fireplaces—one in the living-room and one in the kitchen. We’ll be warm as toast once I get them going.’

      ‘Won’t the wood be wet?’

      ‘I stacked plenty in the laundry when I was up here last weekend,’ Hannah informed him without thinking.

      ‘You came up here last weekend?’ he immediately pounced, and she could have bitten her stupid tongue off. ‘Alone?’ he added on a puzzled note.

      ‘Yes, you were busy working,’ she said, marvelling at the speed with which she could lie. Not that it was all a lie. He had been busy. Busy having a dirty weekend with the treacherous Felicia, at a guest-house not all that far from here. Hannah had booked it for him herself. ‘The place needed airing,’ she went on quite truthfully. ‘It hadn’t been used for a while and I was thinking of bringing the boys up here next schoolbreak.’

      ‘The boys,’ Jack repeated thoughtfully, and Hannah wanted to kick herself. Why, oh, why had she brought them up?

      Jack swivelled to face her. ‘Do Chris and Stuart know about us?’

      ‘No, they don’t,’ Hannah replied frustratedly. Jack had met her sons during their last schoolbreak, when they’d wanted to come and see where she worked. He had kindly taken them on a tour of the premises and attached exhibition homes, and they’d taken a real shine to him.

      ‘Remember, we only got engaged this last week,’ she added. ‘Look, Jack, perhaps you should leave all those sorts of questions till after you get your memory back as well, then most of them won’t be necessary. I think that would be less complicated and much less wearing all round.’

      His sigh showed a very real weariness. ‘You’re right. I think I’m giving myself another headache trying to work everything out.’ And he slumped down in the passenger seat, his head and shoulders drooping.

      She slanted him an anxious look. ‘Are you sure you feel all right?’

      ‘I’ll live.’

      ‘You should be in bed, resting.’

      ‘You could be right.’ He began rubbing his temples.

      ‘Won’t be long now,’ she said, throwing him a motherly smile. ‘Here we are, in fact.’

      The cottage was old and quaint, made of stone, with a pitched iron roof and two chimneys. It had a small enclosed front porch and front door with stained-glass windows on either side. Inside it had a central hall which opened into two bedrooms and one bathroom on the right, and one long living-room on the left. At the end of the hall was a large, comfy country kitchen, whose large pantry had been converted to a sleekly modern laundry, complete with dryer. Out at the back a wide and sunny veranda overlooked thick bushland, with mountain peaks in the distance.

      Two paths led from this back veranda—one leading off on a bushwalk the boys called the Boomerang, because it brought one right back to its starting point, and the other going round the side of the house to a small stone shed which had once housed an old dunny and an equally ancient laundry, complete with copper and washboard. Now it was where the wood, the mower and other various tools were kept.

      Hannah loved the place—its simplicity and its peace and quiet. The boys had always liked it too—especially the bushwalking. She’d come up here with them as often as she could after Dwight had bought it, mostly without her husband. He had always СКАЧАТЬ