Page 54 of Prognosis Incompatible

‘Yes, not long ago. She’s flying back to Brisbane early tomorrow morning. I called in and saw Jenny, too.’

‘How’s she holding up?’

‘Barely,’ he said. ‘They’re hoping to start his first round of chemo in the morning.’

‘Poor kid,’ she murmured, and Marcus squeezed her hand. When she looked at him she knew he was feeling even more wretched.

They walked the rest of the way in silence and without any consultation they ended up at the pub where it had all started only a few weeks ago. They sat at the same table and he ordered them the same drinks and they whiled away the evening eating and talking, trying to keep their minds off Trent and his mother and what they were about to go through.

But when they ended up back at his apartment, it wasn’t the same as the first time. Their joining wasn’t the fast, furious, get-your-clothes-off exercise it had been last time. It wasn’t flirty or funny. It was one hundred per cent more intimate than any time before. Madeline felt as if her soul had been stripped bare and Marcus had given her a rare insight into his.

Her orgasm was more intense than it had ever been and afterwards he held her to him, not moving away. His weight grew heavy and eventually she stirred and he reluctantly shifted. But he pulled her in tight, her back against his chest, spoon fashion, and he dusted her shoulders and neck and back with feather-light kisses as she fell asleep.

––––––––

Madeline woke a coupleof hours later, Marcus’s arm still around her, his breathing deep and steady. She shifted his arm gently, needing to use the bathroom. He stirred a little then rolled on his stomach and drifted back to sleep.

She took care of business then stood in the en suite doorway for a few moments, just watching him. Ordinarily she would have gone back to bed and woken him for more sex but his face was free of the frown he’d been wearing all day and she decided to leave him alone.

Feeling restless, she pulled on her knickers and her shirt, fastening one button at the front, and wandered into the kitchen. She put the percolator on and fixed herself a cup of coffee and took it onto the deck, sitting in a chair and putting her feet up on the railing. It was a beautiful night. A three-quarter moon hung large in the sky and bathed the river below in its milky glow.

A soft breeze blew, lifting her heavy curls off her neck, and she shut her eyes, enjoying the kiss of the wind on her heated skin and the sounds of the river below and the background hum of the city all around her. Her thoughts drifted to Marcus’s love-making and her stomach flopped over, thinking about how he had made her cry out for mercy from the power of her orgasm.

Six weeks down the track she still couldn’t believe how he made her body come alive. He knew every inch of her skin and where to stroke it and where to kiss it and where to lick it. He knew the bits of her that made her shiver, the bits that made her moan and the bits that made her beg for more.

She had never been ‘known’ so thoroughly.

And she knew his special places, too. She knew that if she stroked the sensitive flesh where his hip bone sloped down into his abdomen he would tense and if she licked his collarbone he would break out in goose-bumps, and if she bit his neck he would groan out loud.

She sipped at the coffee, relishing the wave of lust that undulated through her body. If she kept thinking like this she was going to have to go back in and wake him, whether she wanted to or not. Her pelvic-floor muscles rippled in anticipation and she sighed deeply.

She let her thoughts drift to other things and invariably they went to Trent Smith. She thought of Jenny out there somewhere, probably lying awake in the dark, worrying or crying herself to sleep. The fragility and uncertainty of life seemed magnified tenfold by the Smith family’s tragedy.

It just didn’t seem fair that a little boy, innocent and carefree, was looking down the barrel of a potential death sentence. Yes, these days there was over a seventy per cent five-year survival rate for childhood leukaemia, but you could never be sure who was going to be in the seventy and who was going to be in the thirty.

She realised that you never knew what was around the corner. Trent Smith had been a happy little boy a week ago, a little pale and a picky eater, but essentially normal. And now he was in hospital about to start chemotherapy. If it could happen to him, it could happen to any of them.

It had happened to her parents. And Abby.

Happy and alive and in love one day and then three days later on her couch, minutes away from dying. Life was short and unpredictable. She knew that from Abby and now from Trent and she certainly knew it from her line of work.

She thought about how Marcus’s heart had melted today when he’d discovered that Trent’s father wasn’t around. She knew him well enough to know that it had really affected him. He had a big squishy soft spot inside for kids just like Trent. Kids like Connor. Like the kid he’d once been. She had seen how great he was with his nephew and knew that Trent facing leukaemia without a dad was like pushing a big old bruise inside him that had never quite healed.

She loved him for that.

And there it was. She loved him. She hadn’t meant it to be. She hadn’t planned it. Hell, she hadn’t even realised it until this very moment. But the truth was inescapable. She was in love with him. He had warned her not to, he had been very clear that it was just sex, but it had happened anyway.

Quite what the hell she was going to do with her revelation she didn’t have a clue. Neither of them had talked about their future. They’d both just been living in the moment.

Maybe after all this time his feelings had changed, too?

But if they hadn’t?

What would she do if she told him and he walked? Could she handle it if he did? And was tonight really the best night to spring it on him?

Was there ever going to be a good time? When would have been the right time to tell Jenny Smith about her son?

What the hell were her and Marcus doing? Having nights of endless sex and spending every spare moment together was all well and good. But what if she was diagnosed with cancer tomorrow? What if he was hit by a car, riding that ridiculous skateboard? Would she regret not having told him? Did Jenny regret not having told Trent she loved him one more time each day for the last six years?

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