‘THERE’S a path down to the river if you’d like a short walk,’ Mike said, when Jacinta had refused coffee and he’d paid the bill. ‘Libby found it last time we were here.’
Mike took her hand and led her through the dining room and out a door. The setting, and the scene before her, especially now the moon had got into the act, was so romantic it was easy to imagine they were the only two people in the world. Yet doubt and sadness, in equal measure, had wormed their way into Jacinta’s heart.
He’d told her about his father, mentioned his daughter often in his conversation, yet even if she became more involved with him she’d never be part of these people’s lives. And now she knew a little of his history, she could understand his unwillingness to risk his father’s security.
Honestly, Jacinta, her head muttered at her. You’ve known the man less than a fortnight and you’re worrying because a relationship with him might be short term. And you talked to him about expecting relationships to fail! Take a hint from the river—go with the flow, enjoy whatever you can get out of it then move on.
But her heart knew it wasn’t that easy. Time made no difference. What she felt for Mike had already gone beyond physical attraction.
‘Figured it out yet?’ he asked, the huskiness of his voice causing the goose-bumps to pucker her skin.
‘No,’ she answered honestly, wondering if she was always so transparent or if Mike saw things others didn’t see.
‘Maybe a kiss will help,’ he suggested, guiding her into a fern-shaded grotto by the river.
A kiss will seal my fate, she thought, then wondered if it was a quotation she’d heard or read somewhere as it seemed an unlikely thought to be having.
But while her head puzzled over its own words, her body was revelling in the way Mike’s hands brushed across her skin, the way his fingers lingered in specific spots—beneath her ear, above the pulse in her wrist.
His touch was priming her for what was coming, and she let him touch her. Her nerves and sinews tightened in expectation, her mouth felt dry and pebbled nipples brushed against the confines of her bra.
So when he finally gathered her close and pressed his lips to hers, she responded with all the fire he’d built inside her and gave herself up to the multitude of sensations just kissing him provoked.
‘I think this grotto is an even worse place than an examination table to be making love to you,’ he muttered when, this time, she disengaged her lips and moved far enough apart to draw in some much-needed air.
‘Are you busy this weekend? Painting walls somewhere?’
Jacinta knew what he was asking, but the kiss had, as promised, already sealed her fate.
‘I’m working Saturday morning and, no, being the boss doesn’t mean you can change my duty hours. But after that…’
She should be out at the new house, helping the kids, volunteers and the new house-parents set it up for the big opening. They’d barely started on the gardens. Or she should be catching up with her mother, whom she’d seen more at meetings than at home lately. Or—
‘Then I’ll pick you up after work and we’ll go up the coast. Or would you prefer the mountains—one of those cabins in the hills, where the owners provide hampers of food and perfect privacy? Name the place you’d like to go.’
Jacinta felt his words surge over her like a tidal wave, tossing and tumbling her until decision-making was impossible.
‘You decide,’ she managed to say, before he kissed her to seal the agreement.
In the cool light of day, the idea was, of course, ridiculous. Jacinta arrived at work wondering if Mike’s promise that she’d always be able to contact him held true. She’d find out when she phoned him later—in the first break between patients.
Or maybe at lunchtime, though he could have a business lunch so not be available.
She worked her way through the usual stream of minor illnesses, injuries and assorted pain, and between patients argued ceaselessly with herself.
‘Without an X-ray it’s impossible to tell how badly affected the joint is, Mrs Nevin,’ she said. ‘X-rays these days aren’t harmful, and as you’re on a pension you can have it done at the radiology clinic for nothing.’
‘What makes you think I’m on a pension, young lady?’
Mrs Nevin’s querulous demand startled Jacinta.
‘Aren’t you on a pension?’ she asked, looking more intently at the elderly woman, clad in threadbare rags and, as usual, clutching an armful of plastic bags bulging with an assortment of equally threadbare garments.
‘I wouldn’t take money from the government if they paid me to!’
Pale blue eyes darted fire at Jacinta, daring her to ask more.
A dare she set aside for the moment.
‘If you’re not on a pension, you can have a free X-ray at the hospital,’ she suggested.
‘I don’t need a free anything, young lady, so don’t patronise me! I can pay for an X-ray if I want one, but I don’t. Nasty things, those X-rays. They do more damage to your insides than you doctors let on. If God had meant us to know what was going on in our bodies, he’d have given us transparent skin, now, wouldn’t he?’
‘I guess so.’ Jacinta found herself agreeing, though weakly. Transparent skin? The image it threw up was horrifying!
‘But,’ she said, rallying again, ‘you could get rid of the pain in your hip for ever with a hip replacement. Wouldn’t it be worth having an X-ray to see if it would be an appropriate treatment?’
‘Have someone else’s hip in my body? No thank you!’
Jacinta wondered just how badly she’d muffed the beginning of this consultation to have Mrs Nevin thinking this way. She sorted through a drawer, found a picture of a metal hip prosthesis and began again, explaining hip-replacement options to her patient.
‘I’d rather have the pain,’ Mrs Nevin told her. ‘If you could just make my tablets a bit stronger, then it wouldn’t be so bad.’
She struggled to her feet, collected up her plastic bags and prepared to leave, but every time she moved Jacinta saw the wince of pain imperfectly concealed.
‘Here’s a prescription for a different type of anti-inflammatory tablet that might help with the pain.’ She handed the slip of paper to Mrs Nevin. ‘Sometimes changing tablets works for a while. But, please, come back and see me soon. We’ll talk again about what can be done.’
Mrs Nevin shot her a doubtful look, as if by even mentioning hip replacement Jacinta had somehow let her down.
She opened the door to let her patient out, and realised she wouldn’t need to phone Mike. He was there, over by the reception desk, chatting to Carmel as if he popped in every day.
He nodded to Jacinta then, as she pulled the next patient card from the box and was about to call the patient’s name—at least she’d achieved something this week—he held up his hand, said something to Carmel and crossed the distance between the reception area and Jacinta’s consulting room with long, sure, determined strides.
Bemused by both his unexpected appearance and her own reaction to it, she stood aside to let him in. He closed the door behind him, reached for her, then rested his back against the door while he kissed her with such ruthless intensity she had to bite back little cries of…
Ecstasy? Surely not.
Submission?
Her?
‘You’re driving me mad, do you know that?’ Mike’s demand put her own problems out of her head. ‘I couldn’t wait until Saturday. Damn it! I couldn’t even get through a whole day. I have architectural plans to study, a backlog of financial papers so high I can’t see over them, decisions to make about the expansion, and all I can think about is a little brown mouse with lips that send me wild and a body I long to ravish so thoroughly we might have to stay in bed for a year.’
He looked down at her, his eyes steely grey, alight with what she suspected might be passion, then growled, ‘Well, don’t you have anything to say for yourself?’
‘I’ve a patient waiting. We’re short-staffed, remember.’ Jacinta was pleased to hear that her voice was shaking only slightly. Boy, was she handling this well! Like a mature, sensible adult, in fact. ‘And while we’re on the subject—’ when on a roll one might as well keep going ‘—it would make more sense to cut back on the associated medical personnel—nurses—and the office staff, if you need the clinic to be more financially viable. Somewhere along the way, we were going to discuss this, but you keep letting the sex thing get in the way.’
‘I keep letting the sex thing get in the way?’ he growled. ‘You’re the one who keeps kissing me back.’
‘But only because you’re there—or should that be here?’ Uh-oh! She was losing it again. Perhaps because he was smiling at her, and the tip of his forefinger was running up and down the inner surface of her forearm and driving her to distraction.
‘I’ve a patient waiting,’ she repeated, only far more weakly, when the glint in his eyes told her he was about to kiss her again.
‘And I’ve got work to do. One last quick kiss, small mouse, then I’ll see you midday Saturday.’
He stole the kiss before she could object again—stole her breath as well, so when she did re-emerge from her room, several minutes after Mike had departed, she could barely make the patient’s name heard above the hubbub of the waiting room.
You didn’t tell him you wouldn’t go away for the weekend, Jacinta was thinking while Carol Speares, who worked with Ken and Pat in the building across the road, poured out her concerns about working in the contaminated building.
‘It’s a strange thing, but not everyone breathing the same air is affected,’ Jacinta explained, forcing herself to concentrate on her job. ‘I guess it’s like viral diseases that sweep through an office but only some people catch them. The tests the Health Department is organising for you to undergo will be conclusive, Carol. And they’ll be followed up after a month with retesting.’
‘But I want to have a baby,’ Carol told her. ‘We talked about it—about me going off the Pill—last time I was in, but with this hanging over my head…’
‘You don’t have any symptoms of Legionnaires’ disease, but you’ll know for sure when the test results come back—in about ten days maximum. You could put off the plans for getting pregnant for ten days, couldn’t you?’
‘But I’m already off the pill. We’ve been having sex and I might be pregnant already. And have the disease!’
Carol was sufficiently distressed to totally distract Jacinta’s mind from thoughts of Mike—though she did tuck the word ‘Pill’, with a question mark behind it, to the back of her mind. To be retrieved and considered later.
She unlocked the cabinet with her illicit supply of free samples and sorted through it.
‘Let’s start with a pregnancy test. Here’s a test kit—the instructions are on it. I’ll give you two, in fact, as it’s early days yet and it mightn’t be showing in your urine. In the meantime, until you’re cleared, use protection. I’m sure your husband will understand the need for it until you know for certain that you’re OK.’
Carol took the test kits and thanked Jacinta, but she was still disturbed and Jacinta felt a niggling sense of doubt that, had she not had her own personal life on her mind, she might have provided a better service for her patient.
Perhaps going away with Mike for the weekend was the answer. It would get the sex over and done with and she could then get back to normal.
Brave thoughts indeed, but did she believe them?
‘Mr Warren?’
A tall gangling youth rose from a chair and walked towards her. His pupils were so dilated that, except for a rim of colour at the very edge of the irises, his eyes looked black.
She led him into her room, conscious, as she always was with addicts, that she had to be on full alert.
Particularly today, when distraction came so easily.
‘What can I do for you?’ she asked him as he slumped into the chair.
‘Get me off the stuff. Do something, anything, but if I don’t get off, it’s going to kill me.’
It was the voice of despair but sometimes, just sometimes, an addict meant it and was willing—or desperate enough—to go through the rigours of a detox programme.
‘Have you tried before?’ Jacinta asked, while she riffled through papers on her desk for the phone number of the nearest drug rehab centre.
The young man nodded.
‘Been on meths, it didn’t work. Want naltrexone. Implants. That’s what’s working.’
On some addicts, though it’s still not fully tested—not even legal, Jacinta thought, while she wondered what she could say that would keep him interested in seeking help.
‘We can’t do that here. You need a place where you can be treated and remain for a while after treatment. I can phone Freedom House, and ask someone to pick you up from here. They can offer you all the available options and look after you while you come off it.’
Her patient shook his head.
‘I’ve been there, they don’t do it, but someone said the clinic does it.’
A cold dread clutched at Jacinta’s heart. Could one of the other doctors in the clinic be illegally implanting naltrexone? If the practice was even suspected, the Medical Ethics Board would have reason to shut down the clinic.
Mike Trent wanted the place shut down…
Don’t go there, her head warned.
‘Well, I don’t,’ Jacinta said, when she realised she hadn’t answered Mr Warren’s assertion. Couldn’t keep calling him Mr Warren either. She checked his card. ‘Brad, I’m sorry, but until the implants have been properly tested, they are illegal. And if you find a doctor willing to do it, he’s practising beyond the law and there could be serious consequences for you as well as for him. It’s not yet approved because no one’s sure how it’s going to affect patients long term. As a drug, it affects the liver, so if you’ve a hepatitis infection, or any problems with your liver, it could kill you.’
He leapt from his chair so suddenly that Jacinta felt a flicker of fear. She poised her knee just below the panic button on the underside of the desk, ready to press upward if she needed help.
‘Do you think this is better than being dead?’ Brad leaned across the desk, supporting his weight on hands bunched into fists.
He thrust his face towards her.
‘Look at my eyes. What do you see? Emptiness. Nothing. That’s what you see. That’s my life. Nothing.’
He stormed towards the door, but Jacinta followed him and caught at his arm.
‘But it doesn’t have to be that way, Brad. Give ordinary rehab another go. The programmes are better now, they’ve houses in other places where you can live while you’re recovering. You can get out of the cycle you’re stuck in. It can happen!’
She spoke with all the passion that had brought her to work in this place, and something must have got through because he slumped against the door, where another man had leant so recently, and nodded at her.
‘Can you ring them? Ask them to pick me up here? I’ll wait in the waiting room. If I go back outside I’ll see someone I shouldn’t and before I know it I’ll be planning another score.’
‘I’ll arrange it for you,’ Jacinta told him, speaking gently so she didn’t frighten him away. ‘Sit down for a minute. I’ll get someone to take you into the treatment room and make you a cup of tea while you’re waiting.’
She phoned Reception first and asked for Jenny, who was the most empathetic of the associated medical personnel, then phoned the rehab centre and quickly explained, knowing the time when an addict felt strongly about seeking help was limited. In another hour Brad might have lost the urge which, this time, might save his life.
But the reminder of why she was so committed to Abbott Road stayed with her, blocking out her fantasies of making love with Mike, shutting memories of his kisses into a compartment way back in her mind.
Where it had to stay if she was going to be an effective doctor, she told herself as she drove home, deliberately going out of her way so she could pass the Tivoli and remember their dinner together.
So her head scoffed at her heart, and altogether she was more muddled than ever.
‘You look exhausted,’ her mother scolded, when she walked into the house and dropped her bag on the floor in the front entry.
‘I think I might be,’ she replied, ‘though a quick bath will revive me. I’ll be down in time to sample whatever delicious food it is I can smell.’
Guilt hit her like an added weight on her shoulders.
‘It was my turn to cook last night, wasn’t it? I didn’t give it a thought.’
‘Fizzy and I managed on our own—went to the bistro down the road, in fact. But we were pleased to think you might be doing something nice for yourself for a change.’
Boy! Wait until these well-meaning folk heard about the plans for the weekend!
Now was the time to tell them.
‘I won’t be long in the bath,’ she said, shirking the revelation, mainly because she was still wondering if she could shirk the arrangement as well.
And if it would be for the best if she did.
‘So what’s he like? Tell all,’ Fizzy prompted when, clad in her second-oldest jeans—the oldest being covered in paint—and a loose sloppy sweaty, wet hair clinging limply around her face, Jacinta came down to dinner.
‘What’s who like?’ she asked blandly, though she knew she wouldn’t get away with it.
Couldn’t help but smile either, just thinking about Mike.
Perhaps she wouldn’t cancel the weekend.
‘Good-looking, tall, we look stupid together, grey in his hair, he’s thirty-eight, divorced, twelve-year-old daughter I presume lives with her mother, and he won’t ever marry again so I shouldn’t get involved.’
‘Oh, dear,’ her mother said. ‘You’ve fallen in love with him, haven’t you?’
Jacinta eyed her with suspicion, mentally replaying what she’d said.
‘How on earth can you reach such a conclusion from that description? We look ridiculous together.’
‘There you go again,’ her mother said. ‘If you weren’t in love, you wouldn’t care how you looked with him.’
Jacinta threw her hands up in the air.
‘I d-don’t b-believe this!’ she stuttered. Then she frowned at her mother. ‘And what makes you such an expert anyway?’ she asked. ‘You’ve had any number of men following you around like lovesick chooks—’
‘Roosters?’ Fizzy suggested helpfully.
‘Well, roosters, then—for years. Since Dad died, in fact. And have you ever looked at one of them? What do you know about love?’
Her mother smiled.
‘I knew it with your father—right from our first meeting. I guess I’m just a “on love in a lifetime” person, though if it happened again at least I’d recognise it.’
‘You’re saying I wouldn’t?’ Jacinta demanded, unable to believe she was having this conversation but unwilling to let it drop.
‘I’m saying you’re often too committed to what you’re doing to give it a chance. Fire and passion are tremendous assets in any job, but they can also burn you if they’re not put to proper use. Maybe some of it could be channelled into a relationship.’
Where it might totally consume me, Jacinta thought, remembering the volcano.
‘I’ll get our meals,’ Fizzy offered, while Jacinta reached out and took her mother’s hand.
‘I know what you’re saying, Mum,’ she whispered. ‘I guess what worries me is that I might also be a “one love in a lifetime” person as well.’
‘And you’re afraid of getting hurt? Anything worth having carries the risk of pain, Jacinta. From birth onwards. And you’ve never been one who stood fearfully on the sidelines of life. You’ve always plunged right in.’
But into volcanoes?
She shook away the question and smiled at her mother.
‘I’m going away with him for the weekend,’ she said, dismissing all her own doubts in that simple declaration. Then she tucked her mother’s hand into her arm and they walked through to the kitchen, where Fizzy was setting out their meals on the big central table.
Fizzy demanded more information, but Jacinta turned the conversation to the new house and the furniture-shopping expedition.
‘I felt bad,’ Fizzy said, ‘buying all that stuff. I don’t think Mum ever had anything new.’
Jacinta heard the loss and longing in her voice and hoped that one day Fizzy and her mother could be reconciled. As her own mother asked more questions about the house, Jacinta considered the bond that existed in families, even abusive ones.
Then felt a momentary wave of guilt that she wouldn’t be around to help with the final preparations for the grand opening the following weekend.
The loud demands of the phone interrupted both her thoughts and the conversation.
‘Do you want to get that, Fizz?’ Jacinta suggested, thinking she could delay standing up for another few minutes. Evening phone calls were usually for her, and usually a crisis of some kind.
Fizzy returned with a huge grin plastered across her face.
‘It’s him!’ she announced, as if Jacinta had won the lottery with a personal phone call. She was waving the cordless receiver in her hand. ‘You will take it here, won’t you?’ she teased.
Jacinta grabbed the phone from her and carried it with her out the back door.
Her greeting was so tentative it was a wonder Mike heard it, but he must have for suddenly he was speaking, the deep voice sounding even deeper on the phone.
‘I did something I’ve never done before and pulled an employee’s personnel file to get your home number. Then, blow me, if you don’t live just two streets away from me. Do you want me to come over?’
‘To meet my family? Chat to Mum and Fizzy?’
She heard his husky chuckle.
‘Not exactly what I had in mind but, yes, if it’s what I have to do to see you.’
‘You saw me earlier today,’ she reminded him, while her heartbeats rattled against her chest in excitement. Such silly behaviour could only be love. Couldn’t it?
‘It wasn’t enough,’ he was saying. ‘Look, I can walk over. Maybe we could sit in your garden and talk. I can’t picture the house. You do have a garden, don’t you?’
‘Sit in the garden and talk?’ Jacinta repeated, putting enough emphasis on the last word for him to get her drift.
She looked out across the garden, saw the moon coming up on the eastern horizon and sighed.
‘No. I’m really tired and need to get a good night’s sleep, and “talking” to you isn’t conducive to good nights’ sleeps.’
There was silence—long enough for her to wonder if anyone had ever said no to Mike Trent before.
‘I’ll accept that excuse,’ he said at last, ‘pathetic though it is. But only on condition I can see you tomorrow night.’
‘What about the piles of work you’re neglecting, the architect’s plans, the billion-dollar business?’
‘It’s going to hell in a handcart,’ he told her, ‘and it’s all your fault. But now that I’ve seen my dad and you’ve turned me down, I’ll scoot back to the office and put in a good few hours. I will see you tomorrow?’
‘I’m working late—the clinic’s open till eight on Fridays—and by the time I pack up, it’s always after nine and I’m always tired, cranky and terrible company.’
‘Then I’ll pick you up and spirit you away to somewhere special. Trust me.’
Jacinta heard herself agreeing then, to make matters worse, indulging in the kind of silly conversations lovers had. And smiling as she did it.
Her head had apparently given up on convincing her of the folly of this relationship. In fact, the way she was carrying on, her brain must have taken leave of absence.
‘You should have asked him over,’ her mother said, when she finished the conversation and walked back inside. ‘He lives not far from here.’
‘How do you know that?’ Jacinta demanded. ‘You haven’t been checking up on him, have you?’
Her mother smiled.
‘Of course not, but I see his father at the shops from time to time. Ted Trent. I didn’t put the two of them together until yesterday when Ted and I were talking about broccoli and he was saying how it had taken him years to get his son, Mike, to eat it.’
‘You talk to this man about broccoli?’
Jacinta felt as if the world had suddenly tipped sideways, causing separate bits of her life to collide.
‘Not always about broccoli,’ her mother replied. ‘But we chat. He’s reading Aristotle at the moment and I did ancient Greek at school, so he was asking—’
‘Don’t tell me,’ Jacinta said. ‘I really don’t need any more confusion in my life. I’ll do the dishes as I didn’t cook, then I’m off to bed.’
But sleep wouldn’t come, held at bay by thoughts she didn’t want to have. It was all very well to contemplate an affair with Mike—to be adult and mature about it because she knew it wasn’t going anywhere permanent. He’d made that clear from the start. No marriage—not even a long-term commitment, Jacinta suspected, as that could be as financially dicey as marriage.
Which was OK for him, but what about her? Could she have that kind of relationship with him? Could she find joy in something that held, from the beginning, no promise of a future? And if she could, at what cost would it be to her emotional well-being when they parted? Would she be able to pretend she didn’t care when her mother said, ‘I saw Ted at the shops today’? Would she be able to not ask, ‘How’s Mike?’
She’d phone him in the morning. Stop the nonsense before it went any further. Better now than later.
Still muttering clichés, Jacinta drifted off to sleep, awakening not to the same determination but to a skittery excitement that she’d be seeing him that evening.
‘You’re hopeless,’ she told herself as she showered and shampooed her hair—twice.
‘Weak,’ she scolded as she pulled clean underwear, trousers and a cotton knit sweater from her wardrobe and tucked them into a plastic bag with toiletries and make-up.
‘And you’ll regret it!’ she warned, as she all but danced down the stairs.
‘I’m on late tonight and might go somewhere with Mike when I finish,’ she told her mother, who was sitting over coffee in the kitchen. Then, deciding some things were best not talked about, she dropped a kiss on her mother’s head and added, ‘I’m off. I’ve heaps to do. I’ll eat at work.’
Her mother eyed the plastic bag but didn’t comment, merely saying, ‘We’ll see you when we see you, then.’ She turned back to the paper.
But Jacinta knew her lips were smiling, and a new worry loomed. She should tell her mother right now there was nothing in this fling with Mike, so she didn’t start thinking in terms of wedding plans and grandchildren.
But such a confession would reveal too much—draw judgement on Jacinta’s own behaviour, though doubtless it would remain unspoken. Her mother had always let her make her own mistakes.
By the time Jacinta finished work, the tumult in her mind had added to the physical tiredness a long day always caused, so she felt, and no doubt looked, like a piece of chewed string.
She eyed the plastic bag, trying to summon up the energy to walk through to the washroom, have a quick wash and change her clothes. The idea had all the appeal of pulling out her toenails.
A light tap on the door made her straighten in her chair. Please, let it be Carmel saying goodnight, not another patient.
‘Come in,’ she said, and heard the lack of welcome in the words, so when the door opened and Mike poked his head around it, she didn’t quite know how to react.
‘Poor mouse,’ he said. ‘You look exhausted. Are you finished? Can I take you away from all this?’
‘Are you sure you want to?’ she asked, as his gentle solicitude weakened whatever feeble defences she might have retained. ‘Look at me. I did intend washing and changing, but somehow the effort’s got beyond me. Did Carmel tell you about the baby we had?’
Mike beamed at her.
‘Trent Clinics’ first on-the-spot delivery. You all did very well. Carmel says they wanted to call the little girl Jacinta after you.’
‘Poor child. She’ll have people asking how to spell it all her life.’
‘So, shall I carry you out to the car?’
Jacinta looked at him then—really looked at him—and caught what could almost be uncertainty in the lines on his face.
And because uncertainty seemed such a strange thing to associate with Mike Trent, she smiled and stood up and said, ‘Oh, I think I’ll manage the distance. But first I’ll have a wash, even if I don’t change.’
She’d barely finished speaking when doubts assailed her.
‘But perhaps I should change. Where are we going?’
‘No, you don’t need to change, and it’s a surprise. Just relax and go with the flow.’
‘But my car…’
He reached out and put his finger against her lips, touching her for the first time and firing her nerves once again to tingling anticipation.
‘We can leave it there. Now I know where you live, I can pick you up in the morning and drop you at work.’ Mike paused, studying her, then added, ‘No, I was going to do that anyway so your car wasn’t sitting here over the weekend. What we’ll do…’
It was her turn to touch his lips.
‘Let’s forget the car thing. I often catch the train so there’s no need for you to pick me up tomorrow. Mum and I will come in together and she can take my car home.’
Without thinking, Jacinta had offered him a cue—a chance to say he’d pick them both up—but he didn’t take it. And though a wedge of sadness forced its sharp point into Jacinta’s heart, it didn’t stop her body responding to the kiss he dropped on her lips. Neither did it stop her kissing him back, when he took her in his arms and drew her closer.