Australian Affairs: Claimed: Dr Chandler's Sleeping Beauty / Countering His Claim / Australia's Maverick Millionaire. Margaret Way
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gave her a slanting smile. ‘Do you want one?’
‘Certainly not!’
He reached over to top up her water glass from the frosted bottle on the table. ‘So, tell me about Charles.’
Kitty watched as the bubbles from the mineral water rose in a series of vertical lines like tiny necklaces to the surface of her glass. ‘There’s not much to tell,’ she said. ‘We grew up together. I can’t think of a time in my life when Charles hasn’t been a part of it. We did everything together. I thought we’d continue to do everything together.’ She released a little sigh and met Jake’s gaze. ‘I was so busy planning our future that I didn’t notice what was going on in the present.’
‘Do you still love him?’
Kitty looked at the bubbles again, her finger tracing the dew on the outside of the glass. ‘I think there’s a part of me that will always love Charles,’ she said. ‘I loved his family too. I liked that they were so…so normal. I felt at home with them. I blended in as if I had always been there.’
She looked up to find his dark blue gaze centred on hers. He had a way of looking at her that made her whole body break out in a shiver. She became aware of every cell of her skin, from the top of her tingling scalp, right to the very soles of her feet.
She gave herself a mental shake and reached for her wine glass. ‘What did your brother want when he came to the unit today?’ she asked.
A mask slipped over his features. ‘I thought we were talking about you,’ he said.
‘We were,’ she said. ‘But now it’s your turn to talk about you.’
‘What if I don’t want to talk about me?’
‘Then talk about your brother.’
He frowned as he reached for his own wine glass, but he didn’t drink from it. He just sat there twirling the stem round and round between his finger and thumb. ‘I hate talking about my brother,’ he said. ‘Talking doesn’t change anything. He’s a fully-grown adult and yet just lately he’s been acting like a kid. He used to have a part-time job to fund his way through university, but he lost that over some run-in with the boss. He’s been putting the hard word on Rosie and Jen for money and when he’s really getting desperate he comes to me.’
‘Where does he live?’
‘In some doss house in the inner city,’ he said, scraping a hand through his hair. He made a despairing sound. ‘My kid brother bunks down with every other desperado on the streets. My mother is probably spinning in her grave.’
Kitty put out a hand and touched his arm. His muscles flexed then stilled under her touch.
After a long moment his eyes met hers. ‘Do you know what gets me?’ he asked. ‘He had everything going so well. He was a straight A student. He was up for a university prize in engineering. He’s so damn bright—much brighter than me. I’ve had to work damn hard to get where I’ve got. But he’s thrown it all away. It’s such a damn waste.’
‘Is he doing drugs?’ Kitty asked.
He rubbed a hand over his face. ‘I don’t know if he’s touched the hard stuff. He says not, but how can I trust him? He probably doesn’t remember from one day to the next what he’s been doing.’
‘What about rehab?’ she asked.
His eyes hit hers. ‘You think I haven’t tried that?’ he asked. ‘I even paid up-front for a private clinic, but he didn’t show up on admission day. I couldn’t find him for a fortnight. The clinic had a waiting list a mile long so I couldn’t get him in even when I found him.’
‘Sometimes it’s hard for family members to be the ones to help,’ Kitty said. ‘You’re too close and they don’t always want to listen.’
His fingers tightened around the stem of his glass. ‘The sick irony is I’ve spent the last twenty-four years of my life being a substitute father for my sisters and brother,’ he said. ‘Don’t get me wrong—I was glad to be able to do something. My mother wanted each of us to have better opportunities than she’d had. It was up to me to see that her vision for us as a family was fulfilled.’
‘That’s why you’ve never travelled, isn’t it?’ Kitty asked.
‘I had a ticket booked once.’ He gave her a brief glance before focussing on the contents of his glass. ‘I had all my siblings sorted, or so I thought. I was going to head off to Europe for a couple of months. Kick my heels up a bit, have a life, have some fun without the pressure of responsibility.’
‘What happened?’
He looked at her again, the line of his mouth grim. ‘Rosie came to me late one night and told me she was pregnant. She’d known for weeks but had been too scared to tell me. She was just nineteen years old. Still a kid herself. I couldn’t leave her to deal with that, even for a couple of months. I didn’t want her to feel pressured into a termination. I wanted her to feel supported in whatever she decided to do. Her boyfriend was useless. And what sort of brother would I be if I just flew out of the country at a time like that?’
‘From what I can tell you’ve been an amazing brother and uncle,’ Kitty said. ‘Look at the way you gave that party for her. And then you took your nephew surfing, on top of a full day at work.’
‘It’s not enough,’ he said. ‘I can’t be there all the time.’
‘I’m sure no one expects you to,’ she said. ‘You’re entitled to your own life.’
His eyes came back to hers, a wry smile kicking up the corners of his mouth. ‘That’s one very soft shoulder you’ve got there, Dr Cargill,’ he said.
Kitty smiled back. ‘Glad to be of service.’
It was close to eleven when Jake walked Kitty to the door of her town house. A light sea breeze had come in and taken the stifling heat out of the evening, bringing with it the tang of brine from the ocean.
She stood fumbling with her keys in the lock, conscious of him standing behind her, his tall frame within touching distance of hers. She could smell the hint of lemon in his aftershave. She could even hear his breathing—steady and slow, unlike hers, which was skittering all over the place.
‘Do you want me to unlock it for you?’ he asked.
‘No, I’m fine…Oh, damn,’ she said as she dropped her keys with a loud clatter to the tiled floor.
He bent down, scooped them off the floor and handed them to her. His fingers brushed against her open palm, sending electric shocks right up her arm. ‘You don’t need to be nervous, Dr Cargill,’ he said.
‘Nervous?’ Kitty tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, her tongue sneaking out quickly to moisten her mouth. ‘Why on earth would I be nervous?’
He smiled at her. It was the tiniest movement of his lips and yet it unravelled her insides like a skein of wool thrown by a spin-bowler. ‘When was the last time you asked a man in for coffee?’ he asked.
She tore her gaze away from his sexily slanted mouth. ‘When I was in junior high,’ she said. ‘But it wasn’t for coffee. It was for orange juice.’
‘Cute.’
Kitty unlocked the door and then faced him. ‘I have coffee if you’d like some,’ she said, waving a hand in the vague direction of the kitchen.
His sapphire gaze glinted. ‘Got any orange juice?’
‘Fresh or reconstituted?’
‘You can’t beat fresh,’ he said as he closed the door behind him with a soft click. ‘It tastes completely different.’
‘I can never tell the difference,’ she said, with a huskiness that was nothing like her usual dulcet tones. ‘But then, I guess I’m not much of an orange juice connoisseur.’