ALL THE TIME she was upstairs, soothing her very cranky and very tired baby back off to sleep, she was thinking of what came next. When Violet’s soothed mood and now dry nappy lulled her back to sleep, and Marnie faced Ash again.
Thankfully, her baby daughter seemed to get the gravity of the situation and dropped right back off to sleep. Perhaps the totally sleepless night she’d endured had a good reason after all.
She half ran to the mirror to check her appearance, but she was oddly thrilled by what she saw. She looked drawn, sure, but she also looked like a woman she’d not seen in a while. A rather happy one with a blushing complexion. It was heady, spending time around Ash. Addictive perhaps.
She’d already spent some time daydreaming about what it would be like working with him at Carey House. How he’d looked in the waiting room haunted her. It would feel weird now for her to be there and not see him somehow. Her friends had spent the energy of many texts and calls telling her how well he was already doing filling in for her. How attentive he was, how good he was with the patients, and the team. He’d already won the girls over, Marnie could tell. They didn’t say anything about a personal life though.
She quickly slipped on some strawberry-flavoured lip gloss, something she did when she felt a little on edge. It gave her confidence without looking too flirty. She straightened up her sleek bob, untangling the curls Ash had woven in with his touch. His lip on her ear, driving her mad enough that she’d lost the power of speech. It was as if time had stopped, but then Violet had stepped in. She knew she should feel guilty, but she was a single mum in every sense of the word. There was no father to hurt in this scenario. She was the sole parent to her daughter, and she was entitled to a life too. She didn’t want to just be a midwife and mother, by any means.
Once she was looking more like herself, if a little tired and sparkly eyed, she checked on a sleeping Violet and headed back down the stairs. Ash wasn’t in the kitchen, and her heart near stopped when she considered the fact that he might be sitting next door. Wondering how the hell he was going to get out of the situation he’d just walked and nuzzled and kissed himself into.
She turned towards the lounge and stopped in the doorway. He was sitting on the couch, legs spread apart, looking comfortable and huge on her sofa. He looked up when she walked in, his face changing from a pensive look to a wide smile.
‘She went back down okay?’ He stood and crossed the room. His hand was in hers and she was sitting next to him on the sofa before she could utter a word.
‘Yeah, fine. She needs the sleep, although it might cost me later.’
He chuckled softly, but then it died in his throat. ‘Marnie, I don’t want to complicate your life in any way.’
Marnie turned to look at him before she answered. She wanted to gauge the tone of his words by the expression on his face, but he gave nothing away. She played it safe.
‘Well, I think that you saved me today. With Daisy. I needed the help.’ Her face dropped when she realised she was sitting on said couch, but she had taken the covers off the cushions and covered them over with a new throw. He followed her gaze and laughed again. Once more, it didn’t last long.
‘I don’t want to hurt you, Marn.’
Marn? No one had ever called her that. It sounded amazing coming from his mouth, but she concentrated on keeping her own face expressionless. Like his. He was giving something away though. His pain. It was there in his eyes. She knew it as she knew her own. She let him keep talking.
‘I was married once.’ She wasn’t expecting him to say that, but at least she knew now. She could process it. He must have seen her facial expression. He held up his hands as if in surrender, his hazel eyes focused solely on her.
‘I’m single now, but I don’t stay in one place. My job is covering for you. When you go back to work, that will be the end of...it.’
‘I know. I’ve always known that, of course. I wasn’t expecting this, but it doesn’t change my plans.’
He took her hand in his, and that stopped her train of thought.
‘Plans?’ he asked, his thumb rubbing soft, slow circles across the back of her hand. It was very...distracting. Not annoying distracting, but harder to get her words out. And mean them.
‘Yes...er...plans. As you already know, I had Violet through IVF using a donor, so I don’t need a father for my child. I knew what the deal was, and I was more than happy with that.’ She frowned at her use of the past tense. He tongue-tied her when he was this close. ‘I am happy with that. I don’t plan on being in a relationship.’ Ash was looking at her intently, and it was the first crack in his mask. He looked disappointed. She was sure she’d seen it on his face before he looked away. When he looked back and locked her eyes down with his hazel orbs, his face was all business once more.
‘That’s that, then, we know where we stand.’ They both nodded numbly at each other. He cocked his head. ‘Why were you single, can I ask? Before your plan started.’
She sighed, remembering the details and feeling bored of the whole thing. And stung with shame too. Not as bad as before, but it still pained her to speak of it. She knew it had worked out for the best, but rising like a phoenix didn’t mean that the ashes didn’t still throw an ember of memory out from time to time. It still stung, that feeling of being so utterly betrayed by the one person she trusted the most. Now, she was free of it, she reminded herself.
‘I wasn’t, at least, not for that long anyway. I was engaged.’
His hand stuttered for just a second, but the circles continued. She half expected to see little blue sparks when she looked down at their hands, but it was just his huge hand covering hers. ‘He broke it off just as we were about to get married. It was very public, and messy, and hurtful. I was humiliated and I didn’t even see it coming.’ She smiled when she made another comparison she probably shouldn’t. ‘A bit like you coming along.’ His eyes focused on hers then. ‘In a good way.’
‘In a good way?’ he checked; his brow raised. His hand started to move a little faster.
‘Yeah, I think so. I know you said you used to be married, but...’
His hand stopped then. ‘That has nothing to do with you though, it just means that I like to move around. I need it, I guess.’ She nodded in understanding. She’d taken a good look at her life after Oliver and decided to take the plunge with what she wanted in life. Hers had just meant staying close to home. He wanted to be out in the world. Maybe that was what the sparks were about. Maybe he was just an interlude in her life. One that she needed to finally free her of Oliver and the stain he seemed to have left on her ability to care about men. At all.
‘We’re on the same page, as clichéd as it is. I don’t want a relationship or a daddy for my baby, you don’t want anything serious, and you’re leaving anyway.’ The look on his face told her that she’d laid it all out there rather bluntly. ‘Sorry.’
‘No,’ he said a little bit too slowly. ‘I get it. You have your life, and I have mine.’
‘And a shelf life,’ she agreed. She felt a little sad about that, but she didn’t pick it apart in that moment. She could think about it later, digest it when Ash had left Carey Cove, and she was back fully into her new life. A working mum, just as she’d planned. That would be enough to juggle for anyone. She had no time for a man. Even one who looked like Ash. Who pulled her close as she was thinking of reasons to pull apart from him. From the touch she relished every time. The touch that made her body flicker into life. She went willingly, and they lay on the sofa together for the longest time. Holding each other in the quiet of the room and enjoying every moment. It was only minutes, but she thought of everything they could and couldn’t be to each other. When she looked up at him, she knew he was contemplating it himself.
‘It is a shame though,’ she said out into the room. ‘Another life, eh?’
‘I just don’t want to hurt you.’ His chest rumbled his words through her, and she relished every single one, even if they contained twinges of something akin to pain too. ‘I’m not here for ever—’
‘I know.’ She cut him off. He looked so stricken, and she needed him to know that it wasn’t one-sided. She wasn’t some lovesick teenager, hanging on his every word. She was a grown woman. He was the distraction in her plan, not part of it. She’d be just fine after Ash. She was before, right?
‘Listen, we don’t have to keep torturing each other like this. You were married, I was almost married. It’s not like either one of us wants to run back down the aisle. You’re leaving, and I have my job to go back to, and Violet to raise. After Oliver, I promised myself I would never be in that position again.’
Just thinking about it now angered her. The humiliation, the betrayal was bad enough. It wasn’t that that gave her pause though. It was the fact that it meant that she’d never really known Oliver at all. That was what irked her the most. The fact that the man she’d chosen to spend her life with was an illusion. The Oliver in her head was not the Oliver she’d been due to walk down the aisle with and she wasn’t in a hurry to make a mistake like that ever again. ‘Listen, I have my own plan for my life, with Violet. I never had a man figure in it. I wasn’t expecting you.’
‘I wasn’t expecting you either.’ He didn’t look completely unhappy at the thought.
Good, I don’t regret it either.
‘We’re both on the same page, as rubbish as the book might be.’
‘Exactly. Hey, if our exes could see us now. I wonder what they would think about how much they messed us up.’
‘Yeah, well.’ Ash let go of her to run a hand through his already ruffled hair. ‘If you ask me, Oliver is an idiot. You had a lucky escape. He didn’t deserve you.’
‘I have to agree with you there.’ Marnie laughed softly. His jaw was tensed when she finally looked across at him. He was mad, brooding.
‘I mean it. He’s a jerk, hurting you like that.’ He filled her eyesight, her senses, with those hazel eyes she’d come to love seeing day after day. ‘I don’t want to ever hurt you like that. I could never...’
She silenced him by doing what she felt. She kissed him. He wasn’t a jot like Oliver. She didn’t know much about Ash, or his story before Carey Cove, but she knew that much. He didn’t have Oliver’s arrogance, for a start. She felt as though she could trust him. He’d always been so different from Oliver, even if she’d been blind or too reluctant to see it when she’d first met him. As she kissed him, telling him everything with her tongue, she decided to just enjoy the moment. She’d have Christmas with him, surely that would be enough?
‘Marnie.’ Ash pulled away. Just enough to break their lips apart, but his arms came up around her. Encircling her in his grasp. She could smell the fabric softener on his clothing, the aftershave emanating from his delicious neck. His eyes were half closed when he focused on her once more. ‘What are we doing? I thought we agreed to...’ His words trailed off, his grip tightening. ‘I don’t think I can stay away from you. While I’m here, I—’
‘Want to spend every minute with me?’ she finished for him. He nodded, his expression hopeful, unguarded. She reached for him, tighter. One hand came up around his side, slowly brushing each finger along the confines of his clothing. He drew a ragged breath when her finger came up to brush his lips. ‘I don’t want to be away from you either. We have Christmas, right? I’m good with that.’
And she was. Whatever came after, she would remember her time with this heavenly man. Fondly, she hoped. And not wistfully. She didn’t want Ash Ellerington to be something else she would have to survive through. Even if she knew every moment together would be worth it, his departure was ever looming between them. Of course, right now, in his arms, she was finding it hard to remember that fact. The thought of him being anywhere but here, right now, was more than she was willing to think about. For tonight, the plan was in the kitchen drawer of her mind. Something to be picked up and dealt with later. For now, on this snowy December afternoon, Marnie was choosing to live in the moment.