MIKE drove along the freeway, glad the traffic had thinned and he didn’t need to give one hundred per cent of his attention to the road. He knew the way to his destination well enough to give at least forty per cent to his passenger, who’d slid into the leather seat beside him, murmured something about comfort, then promptly fallen asleep.
He glanced Jacinta’s way and realised he needed more than forty per cent of his attention to work out what was happening between them. Was he heading for a mid-life crisis that he’d suddenly become besotted by this woman? To the extent that his work was suffering? That he’d phoned Jaclyn within twenty-four hours of meeting Jacinta and told her—gently, he hoped—he wouldn’t be seeing her any more?
That he wanted, more than anything, to introduce Jacinta to his father?
Yet all the while he knew a relationship between them wouldn’t work. If his insistence that their affair was only temporary didn’t kill whatever it was they had going, then selling the Abbott Road building surely would.
He had to tell her, and the best time to do it would be tonight. But could he do it?
Jacinta slept without moving until he pulled the car off the road and rolled it forward to where it offered the best view out over the city. The moonlight shining through the windscreen gleamed on her hair, and made her small face look pale.
There was an innocence about her as she slept, which was so at odds with the passion of her kisses that his body tightened with desire for the other surprises she might offer.
As if sensing his watchfulness, she stirred and opened her eyes, seeing him first then, as she straightened, the glittering lights of the city below them.
‘It’s like a scattering of jewels flung across a dark bedspread,’ she murmured, peering out towards the lights. ‘Are we on Mount Merion? I’ve been here by day for picnics, but never at night.’
Mike felt a jolt of pleasure at her transparent delight, and wondered if she could read it in his foolish smile.
‘I have a picnic basket, rugs and cushions. Will you join me, my lady, on the grass?’
‘Oh, Mike, this is wonderful! I never dreamt…’
She leaned across and kissed him on the cheek—a kiss of thanks, but so infinitely sweet he wondered if he’d ever felt so happy.
Of course he must have done, he told himself as he gathered gear from the boot of the car. Think of the pleasure you’ve had from the success of the business.
But he pressed his fingers to his cheek, touching the skin she’d kissed, and wondered if pleasure and happiness were the same thing. If they were, perhaps satisfaction was a better word to describe the emotion his business brought him. And even that had waned considerably lately.
‘Can I carry something? You don’t have to do the lot.’
Jacinta stood on the other side of the boot and reached in for a blanket. It was such a homely kind of gesture somehow. He could picture her doing it in years to come, pulling out a child’s stroller, some toys and then the hamper.
It had to be a mid-life crisis.
He shook his head and found she’d gone, no doubt to spread the blanket. He grabbed the hamper, promising himself he’d think about the crisis tomorrow.
‘There’s wine—I brought both red and white—and finger food, which I hope is easier to eat than knife-and-fork stuff.’
He was almost stuttering again in his efforts to sound normal, so he took a deep breath, told himself to calm down and set the basket on the blanket. Went back for cushions and returned to find Jacinta had set out plates and napkins, glasses and a bottle of mineral water. She’d even opened the wine.
‘Sit,’ she said to him, ‘and tell me about this place. I can’t see any picnic tables. Is it a public park?’
So he told her how he’d bought the ten-hectare block many years ago, intending one day to build a weekender on it, but somehow work had taken over his life and he’d not got around to it.
‘But it’s such a beautiful place. By day, you’d see right out to the ocean.’
She leaned across to offer him a tiny pastry, holding it to his lips so he could take a bite.
Then he fed her in turn and slowly but surely the meal became a prelude to seduction. A kind of foreplay so exciting he could barely breathe by the time they’d finished strawberries dipped in chocolate, and she invited him to lick the remnants off her lips.
‘Are you sure?’ he asked, knowing she’d know exactly what he meant.
‘I’m sure,’ she murmured, and lay back against the cushions, slowly slipping undone the buttons on her sensible shirt so he could see tantalising glimpses of the lacy bra and creamy breasts beneath it.
‘You’re beautiful, Jacinta Ford, do you know that?’ he whispered, brushing the dark hair back from her face so the moonlight could shine on her features. ‘For all you put yourself down with talk of small brown mice, you’ve an inner beauty that comes through like a special radiance.’
‘You’re not so bad yourself,’ she said softly, fending off embarrassment by turning the compliment back on him. Her dainty fingers traced his cheek, his nose. ‘Great bones—but I told you that before.’
He chuckled, surprised to find there was so much pleasure in prolonging even more the delights that lay ahead.
‘The skull?’
Her smile widened and her fingers moved to his lips, tracing their outline, her forefinger probing towards his teeth.
He bit the invader, but gently, then kissed her wrist and set it down on the blanket above her head, joining it with its mate then holding them gently so she need have no fear, while his free hand pushed aside the open shirt and his fingers slid beneath the lace.
Jacinta felt her breath catch, and though she strained against his hold she didn’t try to break it. Instinct told her she was safe with this man, whose intention, she knew for certain, was to give as well as to receive pleasure.
‘Moonlight on Jacinta,’ he murmured, finding and releasing the catch at the front of her bra then pushing it back so she lay near naked from the waist up, and open to his scrutiny. ‘So beautiful!’
His hand brushed across her breasts, then held one, as if to test its weight. His little finger curled upward to tease at her nipple and the whisper of sound that erupted from her lips was a plea, not a protest.
Mike responded with his lips, feasting first on one, and then the other rosy, peaking breast, until Jacinta broke his grasp and put her arms around him, holding him close yet uncertain how best to ease the longing he was creating.
She slid her fingers beneath his shirt, heard a button pop and in the end demanded parity.
‘Let’s both get naked and we’ll start again,’ she suggested, and smiled to see the startled look in Mike’s eyes. ‘That is where we’re heading, isn’t it?’ she added, snuggling up to him so her naked breasts rubbed against his shirt.
‘As soon as possible,’ he managed to reply, and the hoarseness of his voice suggested he’d been holding himself on a tight rein, determined to put her pleasure before his own.
But still he teased her, and she teased him in turn until, when neither of them was willing to wait a moment longer, he entered her, sweetly and gently, holding her as if she were the most precious thing in the world, murmuring words of pleasure, asking, encouraging, until they found each other’s rhythm and joined in celebration of the mutual delights of love.
Later, sated, he held her still, tucked against his body so he was a source of both warmth and protection. His finger traced her contours, face, breasts and belly, while his lips smiled down at her and his eyes, even in the moonlight, held a wonder she suspected was reflected in her own.
There were no words, no more chat, just contentment so deep Jacinta wondered how she’d lived without it. It was only when the night breeze sprang up and she shivered that he moved, handing her her clothes, helping her with buttons while she offered help to him. Silence lay between them, as comfortable and easy, as natural as the moonlight that wrapped them in its glow.
They packed up and drove back to the city, Jacinta’s hand pressed against Mike’s leg, a sense of destiny—of belonging to this man—so deep within her she was certain everything would work out in the end.
‘Until tomorrow, mouse,’ he whispered, kissing her one final time in the front doorway of her home. ‘And over the weekend, we’ll talk about the future, because leaving you like this is agony. I want you tucked up beside me as I sleep, not two streets away!’
‘Me, too,’ Jacinta agreed sleepily.
She waited by the door until his taillights disappeared from sight, then made her way inside, walking slowly up the stairs to her bedroom while her mind replayed the special highlights of a very special evening.
The alarm broke into Jacinta’s deep and dreamless sleep, and though she longed to lie in bed a little longer and relive the memories of the previous night, her mother’s voice reminded her they had a train to catch.
And she had a bag to pack, though she’d forgotten to ask Mike if they were going to the mountains or the beach.
‘Though I doubt it will matter,’ she muttered to herself as again she threw clean underwear into an overnight case. ‘The way things are we probably won’t get out of bed.’
The thought sent the tingles up her spine and heat into her lower abdomen, so she had to hug herself to still the excited stuttering of her heart.
Somehow she got through breakfast, parried her mother’s questions about the previous evening and arrived safely at work. Now, surely her mind would settle into work mode and take her body with it. A bit of ‘sensible’ was what she needed here.
As the only doctor on duty, she was busy, which was good, though her eyes kept straying to the clock. Saturdays were often chaotic, so chances were she wouldn’t finish work until late. Knowing that, Jacinta had arranged to phone Mike before her last patient.
But as twelve o’clock approached, the plan fell to pieces. Norrie Clarke, an elderly woman who often came with Mrs Nevin, arrived, crying about her friend, almost hysterical, demanding someone help her.
Julie, the receptionist on duty, tried to calm the woman, but Norrie would have none of it. She needed the doctor to come now, she said.
Jacinta finished with her patient, then took Norrie into the consulting room, but couldn’t get much sense from her.
‘Look,’ she said at last, ‘I’ve one more patient to see, then I’ll come with you.’
She’d phone Mike once she’d sorted Norrie out. ‘But in the meantime, you’ll have to stop wailing and sit quietly. Would you like Julie to get you a cup of tea?’
Norrie’s noise lessened, though not by much, and Jacinta took her back to the waiting room and waved the final patient in.
‘Have you had a tetanus shot recently?’ she asked the man, as she cleaned and bandaged a bad wound on his forefinger.
‘Had one last week,’ he said, holding up his other hand to show a grubby-looking bandage on it. ‘I keep doing it. Shoving rubbish down in the paper-bin, although I know the night staff don’t keep the paper and glass separate the way they should.’
He went on to explain his job as a cleaner in one of the pubs nearby.
‘Next to that old building where the bag ladies hang out,’ he added, as if to make the pub’s position clearer.
‘You mean Norrie—the woman who was out there. Is she one of the women?’
The young man nodded.
‘Her and the old bat with the gammy leg. She whacks at me with her umbrella if I leave the rubbish bins over on what she considers “her” side of the back yard.’
He chuckled as if his battles with Mrs Nevin weren’t all bad, then thanked Jacinta for her time and departed.
‘Come on, Norrie, let’s go.’
Jacinta grabbed her keys as she’d told Julie not to wait but to be sure to lock up as she left. She followed Norrie up the stairs and out past a couple of men in suits who were standing near the window of the adult bookshop with what looked like placards in their hands.
‘This way,’ Norrie told her. ‘It’s up this way.’
She led Jacinta up the mall, past the pub where the young man worked and into the entrance of the decrepit building she now remembered seeing, but hadn’t previously taken much notice of.
‘I can’t get in,’ Norrie complained loudly.
‘You’re not supposed to be able to get in,’ Jacinta told her. ‘Someone owns it, and they want to keep you out. It mightn’t be safe to be in there.’
‘But Bessie’s in there, I know she is, and she must be hurt because she hasn’t been out.’
‘Is Bessie Mrs Nevin?’ Jacinta asked, and Norrie nodded her ragged head.
Jacinta tried the door which, of course, was locked.
‘Have you been around the back?’ she asked Norrie, though she was by no means sure she wanted to get into the building. ‘Can you get in that way?’
‘Bessie says not to go that way. The publican don’t like it.’
Or he might see them and report them to the police, Jacinta thought.
‘Let’s try,’ she suggested, when lack of progress had prompted Norrie to start wailing again. ‘We’ll go down the side street. It’s closer than going back through the clinic.’
Walking down the side street and into the lane reminded her of Mike. He’d be expecting her call but there wasn’t anything she could do right now.
There was no obvious way into the building from the back, the entrance to what must once have been a coal cellar was padlocked shut and a fire escape ended some ten feet from the ground.
‘Let’s try the pub. Maybe someone there knows who has keys to the place,’ she said to Norrie, and though Norrie cowered at the thought of entering forbidden territory, Jacinta had no qualms about knocking at the back door, then opening it and going in, calling as she went so no one thought she was about to rob the place.
Norrie, whimpering now, clung to her shirt, following so close she was treading on Jacinta’s heels.
‘What the hell?’
A man appeared, and Jacinta hurriedly explained.
‘There’s any number of old women hanging around the place, but I’m not their keeper and no one pays me to look after the place,’ the man said.
‘Do you know who owns the building?’ Jacinta asked.
‘Look, lady, I don’t even know who owns this pub. I work here, that’s all.’
He began to walk away, then apparently relented, turning back to say, ‘The best bet is to phone the police. They can break in. Come this way—you can use the phone in here.’
Norrie, whose wailing had increased at the mention of the police, backed away, but it seemed like a sensible idea to Jacinta so she followed, feeling in her pocket for the scrap of paper with Mike’s number on it. She’d phone him at the same time, explain she’d been unavoidably delayed.
She smiled to herself as she imagined his comment. ‘More lame ducks, Jacinta?’ he’d probably say, but she’d hear his smile in his voice as he said it.
The police took some convincing that they should break into a building on the off chance a bag lady might be injured inside, but eventually Jacinta persuaded them to at least come and have a look.
The phone call to Mike wasn’t much more successful. He sounded harassed himself, said he understood and asked if she’d phone when she was free.
He must have people in his office with him, she told herself, but disappointment that she hadn’t heard the smile in his voice bit into her confidence.
Norrie was backed against the wall outside and nothing would convince her she needed to talk to the police.
‘They won’t listen to me because I don’t know for certain Mrs Nevin sleeps here,’ Jacinta threatened. ‘They’ll just walk away—do nothing!’
She must have sounded desperate because Norrie accompanied her back to the front entrance to the building, though she drew back into the shadows when two policemen arrived.
‘The building’s listed as belonging to a company, with a solicitor’s office as the address for mail. No one there this morning, of course, and the only person we could get hold of from the solicitor’s firm had never heard of the company.’
The older of the two policemen explained this to Jacinta as soon as they’d introduced themselves. Then he asked again who Jacinta was and how she’d come to be involved.
‘The pub cleaner confirmed that a number of elderly women, including Mrs Nevin, use the building, which is why Norrie might be right. Mrs Nevin has a bad leg—she could have fallen and be lying injured in there.’
‘Are you prepared to pay for any damage we do if it becomes an issue with the owners?’ the policeman asked.
Jacinta frowned. She glanced at her watch. It was already after two and her time with Mike was dwindling rapidly. Now it seemed she was going to be up for the cost of a new door if she pushed the policemen into breaking this one down!
She glanced at Norrie, and saw entreaty in the faded old eyes.
‘I’ll pay for it,’ she said, and stepped aside.
Breaking down a door was nothing like she’d imagined it would be. The younger policeman simply aimed his boot at the lower hinge, and when it gave way with a splintering of wood, the door sagged, releasing the lock.
‘We’ll have to board it up after,’ the older man remarked to Jacinta. ‘You’ll pay for that as well?’
She nodded and followed the two men inside, smelling dust and damp, and something else.
Cooking smells?
Norrie had dashed away, scuttling like a crab up a curved staircase to disappear out of sight on an upper floor.
‘Follow her,’ the older policeman said to his colleague. ‘You and I’ll look around down here,’ he added to Jacinta.
Signs of recent occupation were everywhere, but there was no sign of Mrs Nevin. Then the younger man called out.
‘We’ll need an ambulance. Can the doc come right away? She looks bad.’
Jacinta raced up the stairs, following the sound of Norrie’s wailing. Mrs Nevin was unconscious, lying in a curiously twisted way beside a tipped-over metal chair.
Jacinta knelt beside her, feeling the faint flutter of a pulse below the woman’s jaw. The younger policeman was despatched to call an ambulance and wait downstairs for its arrival.
‘She was putting up the blanket,’ Norrie whimpered, kneeling on the other side of the woman. ‘She liked to live in different rooms but put the blanket up so the light didn’t show.’
Jacinta was gathering up coats and blankets slung haphazardly around the room, wrapping them around the unconscious woman, while the policeman was going through Mrs Nevin’s handbag, no doubt in search of identifying documents.
‘Do you know if she has any relatives?’ he asked Norrie.
Norrie shook her head.
‘Just her that I know, though she lets a few of us sleep here. If we don’t bring drink. She doesn’t like the drinkers, but she forgot to open the door last night so I knew something must be wrong.’
‘There’s a bunch of keys here. They might be for the doors. Wonder where she got them.’
The ambulancemen arrived and started a saline drip then lifted Mrs Nevin’s frail body onto a stretcher. The older policeman gave orders to the younger, telling him to get someone in to secure the building and to stay until it was done, while Norrie, apparently realising her chances of sleeping there that night were disappearing with Mrs Nevin, began to wail again.
‘Come to the hospital with me,’ Jacinta suggested. ‘We can’t just abandon Mrs Nevin, and as we don’t know of any relatives, you can stay there with her.’
Norrie brightened perceptibly, then Jacinta remembered she had no transport. The suggestion they get a cab pleased Norrie even more.
So, instead of heading off for a weekend of sensual pleasure with her new lover, Jacinta found herself in the familiar confines of the A and E department, awaiting the results of Mrs Nevin’s tests and keeping Norrie as calm as possible under the circumstances.
She phoned Mike, her voice pleading for his understanding as she finished her explanation.
‘So, you see, until I know what’s happening and can arrange something for Norrie, I can’t really leave.’
‘I do understand,’ he said, and added, ‘Phone me when you can get away. Maybe we can salvage something of the weekend.’
Jacinta felt a chill creep through her blood—where tingles had been earlier.
It’s because he’s been working and he’s tired, she told herself. And he’s disappointed.
She even began thinking it might be for the best. If Mike couldn’t handle her chaotic working hours, then it was best they ended whatever they had now—before they both became more involved.
But her heart didn’t believe it, beating erratically at the thought of not seeing him again.
By four, Mrs Nevin had been tested, assessed and admitted to a ward. Her hip was broken and a replacement operation had been scheduled for Monday. In the meantime, she’d be given fluids and antibiotics and kept as pain-free as possible. No relatives had been found, so Jacinta gave her address and various phone numbers as a contact for the woman.
All that was the easy part. Having co-operated as fully as possible, Jacinta now sought a little co-operation herself.
‘Norrie is her friend,’ she explained. ‘Can she stay?’
The sister on duty surveyed Norrie doubtfully.
‘While I’m on duty, but I can’t guarantee anything later.’
The thought of the elderly woman being turned out at the end of visiting hours that evening, in a strange part of town and with nowhere to go, disturbed Jacinta, and she was fretting over it, wondering if she could ask her mother to collect Norrie later, when Mrs Nevin regained consciousness.
Far from wanting to know where she was or what she was doing there, all she wanted was her handbag.
Jacinta pulled it from the little cabinet by her bed and handed it to her, then watched the thin, frail fingers fumble in it, finally producing the keys.
‘This is the key for the front door,’ she said to Jacinta. ‘You’ll have to open it up each night about ten. Just unlock it but leave it closed, so the girls can come in. There’s Norrie and Jess and sometimes Alison. No one else. The place isn’t a dosshouse, you know.’
Jacinta closed her eyes and wondered if she’d strayed into a nightmare.
‘They know they’ve got to be in by twelve and I lock it again then. I don’t want hooligans or thugs bashing us up.’
Realising Mrs Nevin was too weak for an argument, or to be told the lock no longer worked, Jacinta took the keys, but had no idea what she was going to do with them. Or with Norrie, Alison or Jess. Unless, of course, Mike could be persuaded that a night in an abandoned building on the edges of the city was a sexy alternative to whatever he’d planned.
She dropped the keys into her own handbag, found a ten-dollar note and gave it to Norrie.
‘For something to eat and cab fare back to the city if the nursing staff won’t let you stay,’ she said. ‘The cab fare is about five dollars, so keep that much.’
‘And you’ll let me in?’ Norrie said, hope gleaming in her eyes and shaking in her voice.
‘I’ll do whatever I can,’ Jacinta promised.
What she should do was walk away. She knew there were massive problems among homeless people, and had chosen to help the younger street dwellers, deliberately closing her eyes, mind and conscience to these older people so she could focus on the young.
Now she had keys to a building, probably illegally as there was no way Mrs Nevin had a right to them, but the door would be boarded up so keys were no good anyway.
All the way back to work, she worried about it, but when the cab dropped her in the back lane she was no closer to a solution.
Once back in the clinic she settled into the chair behind her desk and pulled out her file of charitable organisations that provided services for the needy. And started phoning them.
By the fifth call she was ready to despair when a man said, yes, he’d be willing to wait at the building from ten to twelve and take any women who turned up there back to his shelter for the night.
‘We have dormitories for men and women, and I’ve a van to pick up strays. I’m usually on the street from midnight, so the two hours won’t make much difference.’
Jacinta thanked him and was about to hang up when he said, ‘Hey, not so fast. I know the mall and Abbott Road Clinic, but where’s the old ladies’ building? I can get away now, be there in about ten minutes. Could you meet me at the mall entrance to your clinic and show me where to go?’
Jacinta agreed, then listened to the man describe himself as overweight and balding.
She disconnected, and her fingers hesitated over the keypad of the phone. She should call Mike and tell him she’d be ready in half an hour, no later, though something in the way he’d sounded earlier made her reluctant to make the call.
But indecision was making her edgy, so she dialled and heard his voice—the deep, husky voice she knew.
‘Poor mouse,’ he murmured. ‘What a torrid day you’ve had. Would you rather cry off the weekend? It’s up to you. I can pick you up and take you straight home if you’d prefer that. Maybe do something with you tomorrow? Or we can go away as planned. How do you feel? Tell me what you want.’
Jacinta was overwhelmed by the emotion his gentle understanding generated in her body.
‘You come, and we’ll decide then,’ she managed to say, though her voice was trembling as much as her body. ‘I’m sorry it’s been such a mess.’
‘Don’t apologise,’ he told her. ‘You’ve no idea the amount of work I’ve got through, trying to keep my mind off seeing you again.’
They arranged to meet in the car park at the back of the building, as Mike had returned his keys to the security people.
‘I’ve missed you,’ he whispered as they said goodbye, and Jacinta held the words to her as once again she locked her room, set the alarm and went up the stairs to the mall.
A huge man was standing there, peering down the stairs.
‘Dr Ford?’ he said. ‘I’m Neville.’
‘And I’m Jacinta,’ she told him, shaking his hand then indicating which way they’d go.
‘Sorry to make you do this, but it would be dreadful if I was waiting in the wrong entrance and missed the women,’ he said, and Jacinta waved away his apology.
‘I’m just so glad you agreed to help. I couldn’t think what else to do. Even with keys, I was chary about the legalities of letting people into the building, though now the door’s been boarded up the keys weren’t much use.’
She led him past the pub and into the entrance of the building next to it.
The door’s at the back here. It’s one of those old three-storey places, and there’s no lift. Just inside, the stairs wind up and up. It’s a wonder none of them have been injured in it before.’
Neville had a good look around, and seemed content to linger for a chat, but Jacinta knew Mike would be waiting, and she’d already ruined half his day.
She excused herself, told Neville to feel free to look around and hurried back down the mall. If she’d thought to take her overnight bag with her, she could have gone down the side street and along the back lane, and saved herself the bother of locking and unlocking the doors, not to mention disarming and rearming the alarms.
But then she’d have missed the signs!
She stopped dead in front of the adult bookshop window and stared in disbelief. The ‘placard’ she’d seen earlier had been erected and the sign read FOR SALE BY TENDER, in letters so red they looked like blood. ‘Inner city building, ideal redevelopment proposition’ it went on, then mentioned land area, zoning possibilities and a real-estate agent who’d be happy to arrange a deal.
Mike was selling Abbott Road.
Mike, who was probably waiting in his fancy Jaguar, right now behind this building, was selling it, closing them down. He must have known because signs like this weren’t made overnight.
And he hadn’t told her.