Can You Forget?

Great, now he’d upgraded from dream to hallucination. Her songs did that: he’d spend the next few hours creating scenarios where they’d meet again. So many years wasted in insane hope, hearing her voice, turning around so damn fast he got dizzy only to meet emptiness, the darkness of ghosts taunting him.

She’d never come to him. They were both different people now. He sure as hell was different—as was she. A reversal of lives. The cruelest joke ever played on a man.

But it didn’t stop his body from lighting like a blowtorch, filling with instant heat, his heart bounding up into his throat with useless, stupid hope against hope. From praying that this time it would be real—it would be her, his Mary-Anne, standing in front of him, with that sweet, high-lipped smile of hers.

Can it, O’Rierdan. She’s never coming back to you.

“Well, I see you’re as rude as ever. Don’t you say hello to old friends anymore?”

Well, that was new to his reunion scenarios…. In his dreams she’d been furious, smacking him as he deserved, or running into his arms and kissing him senseless. But the gentle amusement in this voice confused the hell out of him. He really was losing it…

“Aunt Sheila would be ashamed of your manners—and Uncle Dal would clip your ear, boyo.”

He frowned, blinked slowly beneath his hat. He’d all but forgotten that silly joke of hers. “Mary-Anne?” he croaked.

“Either that or your worst nightmare, O’Rierdan.”

The silver-gold shimmer of laughter rocked his soul. Now that his prayers had finally come true—she was here—what did he do, yell at her for taking so long, or pin her beneath him and love her until he’d slaked half a lifetime of aching fantasy?

Uh-huh. One look at the scars on his face and leg and she’d be begging him. Yeah, that was gonna happen.

“G’day, Mary-Anne.” He didn’t have to lift his hat to see her: she was a tattoo burned on his brain, seared on his soul with a branding iron. She’d lived and breathed, gasped and moved beneath or above him in his dreams every night in hot, vivid color, since he was sixteen. He lifted his knees to hide his hard, primed body, ready for her to say the word. Man, he hurt already, and she’d only been here a minute. “So Anson’s bringing out the big guns to make me answer his summons? He must be desperate to convince you to come to me.” He heard the guttural rasp in his voice, the hot, essential male-to-female thrust-and-parry he’d only ever known on this gut-deep level with her.

Another soft ripple of laughter, full of heart and soul and fire. “That’s what I said, but even though we’ve never worked together, we both know Nick. Never say die.”

“Yeah.” He grinned beneath his hat. Man, he loved her laugh—almost as much as he’d loved the gentle touch of her silky-soft fingers on his skin, as innocent and sensual as the kisses they’d shared as boy and girl. The unbidden fantasy was so intense he almost felt the tender glide of her hands…the kisses so saturated in love they filled all the empty places inside.

Can it, O’Rierdan. It wasn’t going to happen—and he didn’t want her here, re-igniting hungers that he’d never explore. Who are you kidding? They’re in permanent ignition, ready to explode. “Tell him you tried. Want a drink before you go?”

He could hear the grin in her voice. “I’m booked in at the local B and B for three days, so cut the rude stunts. I outgrew being hurt at them by the time I was about twelve.”

Despite the roaring inside him, the exploding Molotov cocktail of fury at his life and her expected rejection, he chuckled. Ah, it felt so good to talk to her outside the bondage of sleep. Never, in all their long history, had she let any of his gauntlets lie unchallenged, defusing his quick rages with a smile. It was refreshing after a year of overdone kindness born of pity and the sidelong glances of people unable to handle imperfection. And having her finally here, with him in the flesh, made him feel like more of a man than he had in years.

And what good is that going to do me? He’d spend the whole time she was here in knife-edged, gut-gnawing hunger. Variety might be the spice of life, but right now this particular life had all the pepper it could handle.

So find out why she is here and get rid of her. Fast. “So spill. What does he want from me? Whatever it is, the answer’s no, but what the hell, I can listen for a few. Entertainment’s kinda self-made in these parts.”

He heard the shrug in her voice. “Sure. But I’d like that drink. In private. I’m booking your services for the afternoon.”

His laugh sounded rusty from disuse…and its feel-good release unleashed hungers he’d worked long and hard to lock away in darkness. Yet the response in kind came, dragged from him against his will. “Baby, watch your terminology. There could be a journo behind any shrub, if they know you’re here. I can see the headlines now. Verity West Writes A New Song. ‘I go for banged-up bush pilots and pay them for their services.’”

She laughed again, its pure sound vibrating with the serenity his soul had hungered to know the past ten years—yet he heard the stress beneath. So it wasn’t any easier for her to face him than it was for him to know she was here… “Well, at least I know you, and you’re my age.”

“I’m more attractive, too,” he remarked blithely, hiding his pounding heart. Mad, crazy—totally certifiable—but the hope wouldn’t go away. She didn’t say no or retreat behind embarrassed silence at the thought of being with him…

He heard the sorrow in her voice as she replied, “Nick only told me about your accident two days ago. If I’d known—”

Sudden cold rage made him grit his teeth. “Yeah, right. We both know you wouldn’t have come. Anson must’ve painted you into a corner to get you to come here. But it’s a good revenge, seeing Tallan O’Rierdan, walking freak show, huh?”

“Oh, grow up, Tal,” she snapped.

His hat suddenly flew over the sand, leaving his unprotected face exposed to her gaze. Refusing to back down, he stared up at her, blinking against the harshness of the hot sun and its silver reflections off the water and bright sand all around. “Well?” He knew what she’d see: the destruction of the face women once compared to a blond-haired, brown-eyed, living angel.

Yeah, right. An angel with pink puckered scars down the left side of his face, perfect on the right. Sorta like those half-man, half-woman carnival freaks people used to pay to gawk at in horrified fascination.

Come on, Mary-Anne, do it. Gulp. Cry. Turn away. Just do it and get the hell away from me!

But he couldn’t drag his gaze from her. Oh man, she was more beautiful in real life than in her promo and society shots, or even his most erotic dreams. Her vivid, wildly curling hair fell free, tumbling over her shoulder blades and full, sweet breasts. Her face glowed pale and soft-freckled in the tropical sun, dominated by a sweet, high-lipped pink mouth, sleepy cat’s eyes and a delicately wide jaw, lending feminine character and strength to a pretty face: the vividness and fire she’d once had in abundance beneath her shyness. She wore a loose tie-up flowered cloth as a skirt and a sapphire-blue bikini—striking against her silky skin, glowing hair and eyes. A floppy straw hat half fell over her face, flat sandals on her feet. A smudge of zinc cream covered her pert nose to stop further freckling.

Lovely. Entrancing. His girl as he’d always wanted her, fat or thin, shy recluse or world-famous ice queen, because she’d never been an iceberg for him. Just natural, unadorned, innocent Mary-Anne, who took in all strays and came out of her habitual hiding with both guns blazing to take a passionate stand for the rights of any underdogs she took into her heart.

His girl, as God made her.

And true to form, her direct gaze stayed right where it was, traveling from his eyes to his messed-up cheek and back again. “Did you think Nick would send me to you without showing me the pictures first? He might be hard, but he’s not a sadist.” Her face softened then. “He wouldn’t hurt you after what you’ve already been through, Tal. And neither would I.”

It took all he had to not grit his teeth. “Thanks, but you can leave the pity at the front door,” he drawled.

“Pity? For what?” Her slumberous eyes blazed with the flaming aliveness that had always made her a goddess in his eyes, no matter what her weight happened to be at the time. “You chose your path, like all of us did when we joined the Nighthawks—I’m sorry you’ve paid the price for your dreams, but you did what you love best. Yes, I hurt for what happened to you, but I don’t pity you—and why would I hate you for marrying Ginny? There were no promises between us, just a lot of dreams on my part.” She sighed. “And even if Nick hadn’t shown me the pictures, I never had hang-ups about physical perfection. I was a nurse—and with my childhood, I can’t afford to judge people by their looks. I’m not Ginny. You should always have known that.”

The mention of his ex-wife released a store of anger buried deep beneath lazy mockery for months. “Oh, I don’t know. You both did a runner when life didn’t work out the way you wanted.”

She tilted her head, utter perplexity now mingled with the dark flash in her eyes. “What reason would I have to hang around home, except my parents? I had college to finish, a job in the city, friends, someone to love me.” Her hands fluttered up. “We used to be best friends, Tal. I thought you’d be happy for me.”

She spoke the words with genuine confusion, but they hit him like a careless blow right to the gut, and his heart—what was left of it. That was the crux of it: he’d never spoken the words. All the promises he’d wanted to give her remained locked inside a boy’s heart, filled with dreams of their future. His father’s son, all right. He’d never had the gift of the gab like Kathy, who’d been the only O’Rierdan to escape the family’s introverted, take-it-on-the-chin genetics.

The name jabbed at him, an uppercut he took in silence with the other blows life punched out. His cute, funny little sister was gone and he’d lost Mary-Anne, the only girl who’d just—

No use thinking, or feeling. He heaved to his feet. “You’re right. I was happy for you. Okay, I’m yours for the afternoon, for the minimal fee of one hundred dollars per hour including tax.” He picked up his Akubra, jamming it over his head—keeping one side of his face in shadow.

“You know, you could earn that much an hour working as a doctor—or back in Search And Rescue with the Nighthawks—and you’d get a lot more job satisfaction,” she said softly.

He wheeled around on her, his throat burning like the sudden prickling heat behind his eyelids. Damn it, didn’t she know he had to fight the longing every day? “Don’t go there.” His voice was harsh and as tortured as a crow in a bird-catcher’s trap. “I’m not coming back. Anson can go to hell.”

“Why, you want him to join you?” She stood him down, defiant, lovely in radiant emotion, and, like a flicked switch, a compass turned north, he was where he needed to be, with her—and it turned him on even more. “So it seems your lifelong hatred of self-pity suddenly looks good from the other side of the fence?”

He almost flinched, remembering his careless, thoughtless, get-over-it remarks about her size—then he understood. The unaccustomed gibes were deliberate, designed to make him think, feel—and fight back. “Call it self-pity if you like. I call it accepting life as it is.” He took a few steps. No hiding the limp. No exaggerating. “SAR operatives run, free-fall out of choppers, climb down cliffs and belay into caves. They climb trees to hide from the enemy and drop out of them to attack. I’m what you might call ‘out of shape.’ I don’t do that anymore.”

He finally obtained his first objective: she turned away.

In the awkwardness of sudden silence, laughter filtered from the other end of the beach from kids splashing, families playing together in the tropical warmth of the late-summer day. The scent of frangipani and fallen coconuts filled the air. It was picture-perfect, a secluded tropical paradise, and she was finally here—yet he felt so damn alone. Aching, needing to reach out, to have the sweetness of contact with her for the first time in more years than he could count.

She tugged at an errant curl dancing in the warm breeze. “So you’re just giving up? Leaving the life behind that once meant everything to you?”

The darkness unleashed…the trembling started deep inside, the damn-fool useless longing to go back. All he’d ever wanted was to be a doctor, to help those in desperate need.

The flash of agony ripped through his leg, the faceless enemy, the constant reminder that his life was over.

He had to get out of here before he fell down.

He tipped up her face, denying the searing heat that raced through him with the simple touch. He couldn’t afford to think about it. “Don’t go there,” was all he said—but even he heard the anguish, the need, and he didn’t have a clue which need it was right now, to have his life back or to have her.

Didn’t matter: his dreams were gone and he couldn’t have them back. He dropped his hand, ready to run.

Limp, his mind corrected in sardonic self-mockery.

The tender touch on his face halted him with the force of a Mack truck. She’d always had that way with her; her power all the stronger because she had no idea what she did to him. “Tal,” she whispered, holding him captive with warmth and caring. “Don’t go. Please.”

He turned his face back to hers and aching hunger ripped through him: the need to fall inside her arms, lips and body—and just maybe, lost inside her, he’d find himself once again.

“We’ll talk tomorrow.” Desperate, his voice sounded thready now, weakening under the relentless jagged hell in his thigh.

He couldn’t face her like this. When he could walk again—when he’d got his head together, drowned the roaring need under the force of a few cold showers—he’d feel more in control.

“All right.” Then both hands touched him, cupping his face. Her silky-soft fingers trailed over his scars, unconsciously erotic on the exquisitely sensitive skin. “You didn’t lose it all. Dreams change shape. You can still help. You can be so much more than you are now.” And the soft brush of her mouth on his shocked him to the core. “We’ll talk tomorrow.”

He swallowed down the ball of hot gravel in his throat. What a man—he wanted her like hell, but could barely stay on his feet. He couldn’t stand for her to see— “Just go, okay?”

As if she knew, she dropped her hands. “Okay. But we have to talk. Consider your services hired for tomorrow—all day.”

With a massive effort, he grinned. “I’ll look forward to that, Miss West.”

Already walking away, she flicked a strange, intense look over her shoulder. “I hope you still feel the same when you know what services the world requires from you—Dr. O’Rierdan.”

When she’d gone, he grabbed the walking stick he kept hidden behind the deck chair near the wooden shack he called his home-office. Gritting his teeth, he hobbled slowly into his cabin. As soon as he was inside he fell to the bed, pulling his legs up, fighting the fisted knuckle-punches gutting him from the inside, from thigh to groin. When he could finally pull it together, he rolled to the bedside table and grabbed the full syringe he kept there and injected his leg, right beside the scars.

He forced himself to lie flat on the bed, waiting for relief. He only took enough to take the edge off, never often enough to get addicted. But when it came, he had two choices: this or puke and pass out where he landed. If he was flying when the pain hit, he settled for a local anesthetic until he got back here.

At least he had a choice today: he could feel sorry for himself or think about why Mary-Anne was here…why she’d gotten mad with him, why she’d touched him—kissed him.

Could it be that maybe, just maybe, beneath the cool, controlled, icy Verity West persona that she presented to the world, his Mary-Anne—lovely Mary-Anne, so sweet and caring, so fiery and passionate as she’d only been with him—still existed? And if she did, maybe…God help him for even hoping—

Don’t think. Don’t go through this. She’ll be gone soon, back to her latest album or concert or high-society party, and your life will go back to crap.

Yet as he drifted into restless sleep he knew that, no matter why she’d come to him or what happened after, life was going to be a hell of a lot more interesting this week than it had been over the past fourteen months.

Chapter 2

But she slipped farther down…poor baby was hanging on to his knees, screaming, her eyes begging for help while the boy on his shoulders began to topple, flung against him in the gale-force wind. Held up by lines suspended from the chopper, they kept slamming into the cliff face. A man, three kids and a split-second choice: which kid did he save? Or did they all die?

Drenched in sweat, he jolted up in bed.

Five-thirty. Would he ever break the habit of jerking awake the second the sun peeped above the horizon?

At least it broke the nightmare.

If he’d never joined the Nighthawks, there’d be no blood-soaked visions stalking him whenever he closed his eyes. He’d be a hardworking Flying Doctor, helping people in isolated areas—

Stupid. I left the Flying Doctors and joined the Navy to make Ginny leave me—and I left the Navy for the Nighthawks because it was my dream to work in war zones, helping those in greatest need. I jumped at the offer, knowing all the risks.

Tal limped to the bathroom, gritting his teeth hard when he had to balance himself to use the john. At least he was walking again this morning—hell, he was lucky he could still walk at all. The docs in Darwin saved his leg from amputation when putrid infection set in, and the most up-to-date plastic surgeon put his face back together—but all the medical magic in the world couldn’t make his femur knit as it had before, or stop the pain. So this was life, Jim, but not as he’d known it.

You could be so much more than you are…

He stood face-up beneath the stinging spray of a cold shower, half wishing it would drown him. Why wasn’t it cold enough to freeze the mess in his head and douse the raging fire of turbulence inside? Just yesterday his life was quiet, serene—

And boring as hell. You know you want to do whatever this mission is. Any reason to be with Mary-Anne again is worth it.

No, damn it, he couldn’t afford to want her here. She’d gone light-years out of his reach…and there was no way he could be friends with her. The white-hot chemistry that confused and embarrassed the hell out of him when he was a kid was still in full force. He’d never be able to look at her without wanting to drag her somewhere and make fast, furious love with her.

Dripping wet, he looked at himself in the mirror. The daily grueling upper body work had done its job: he was in top condition. The days in the sun left his olive skin glowing with health. Even his other leg looked good thanks to the one-legged skip-rope jumps he wasn’t supposed to be doing. As good as he was going to get—nowhere near good enough for a star like her.

So get over it.

Yeah. After half a lifetime of obsession with her, that was gonna happen.

Fifteen minutes later he left the shack and headed for the massive garage-style hangar that housed his little Cessna. A solitary sunrise dip and swirl with Harriet, the one faithful love of his life, would do him good.

He jammed his Akubra on his head as he limped down the soft, sandy dirt track bordered with wild hibiscus and azaleas. If any of the few tourists here got up this early, they’d be off on the high bush tracks or running on the sand to worship nature at its finest: an unspoiled sunrise over a calm, pristine reef ocean. They wouldn’t even notice him.

The irony of it. All he’d wanted once was to be overlooked, unimportant, faceless—but he’d wanted it by his own choice.

Not like this. Never like this.

Passing the nearby B and B on a palm-shadowed, winding path near the beach, he heard soft, peaceful Eastern music. He turned to find its source—and lost his breath.

She stood gracefully on one leg on a towel on the creamy sand beneath a swaying palm tree. The other leg extended back, her arm forward in a balletlike stretch movement. Her hair glowed in the gentle morning light, roped down her back in a simple plait. Barefoot, wearing shorts and a lemon tank top, breasts free of restraint—Don’t go there—her face scrubbed fresh and shower-clean, she resembled the simple, natural girl she’d once been.

And he was gone. The old ache, the helpless longing he always knew when he’d see her waiting for him at the billabong between Eden, his family’s farm, and Poole’s Rest, filled him again.

Mary-Anne had been his since she was six and she’d first seen his face. He’d been hers from the same day, climbing a tree for her against his will, a sulky eight-year-old putting a nest of dead swallow’s eggs back up in the branch to stop her tears for the task she was too chubby and ungainly to perform herself.

Not wanting her then—but wanting to be like her. A timid girl hiding in the shadows of life, she still had the courage to love, to give, never anything but herself. She’d needed him to help with her makeshift hospital of limping wildlife rejects, and he’d needed someone to need him. Just…a friend.

When his feelings changed, he didn’t know.

Maybe when Kathy died of leukemia when he was fifteen? Mary-Anne had left him speechless with gratitude when she’d sneaked through the window into his room the night of the funeral and held him all night in empathetic silence, letting him cry.

The erotic dreams of her started that night, a crazy wildland fire out of control—but, confused and ashamed, he hadn’t called it sexual love for his best friend.

Perhaps he’d known on his eighteenth birthday. His parents, close friends of her parents, had invited her to his private party with just the families, knowing she wouldn’t come to face the town kids’ taunts in a pink fit. Yet, knowing how much it would mean to him if she showed up, she’d stood outside the door and fumblingly handed him his favorite coconut-cream cake. Ginny, rich, pretty, spoiled and his try-hard-wannabe-girlfriend, had seen the pride on his face for his best friend. Spiteful and jealous, she’d said the name Mary-Anne suited her, since she was straight from “Gilligan’s Island.” All the kids laughed, but Ginny couldn’t work out why Tal didn’t. She didn’t know he’d always had a secret crush on the more famous Mary Ann, for being so sweet and kind to dopey Gilligan.

Three months later he’d turned down a major football contract in Sydney—and of all the kids in town, only she understood. “Oh, Tal, I’m so glad I’m not losing you,” she’d whispered…and, seeing her unashamed love for him in her eyes, he’d kissed her for the first time. It was gentle, sweet, awkward and terrifying—a fragile moment of beauty he would never forget. A son of four generations of blunt-talking, hardworking farmers who didn’t know how to communicate, he’d prayed that his touch, his kiss, told her all he could never bring himself to say.

But he’d known he loved her the night his loving, distressed parents and Ginny’s rich, smarmy father, holding the mortgage on Eden and having ambitions for the boy he’d hand-picked to be his son-in-law, had backed him into a corner with two words. “Ginny’s pregnant.” They hadn’t had to say more: they’d known he’d stand by her, even if Ginny had had to find him in a drunken stupor after a college party to seduce him. Well, she’d claimed he’d been enthusiastic, but since his mate Carl had had to carry him back to his dorm, and the remains of his puke had lain on the floor beside the bed, it hadn’t seemed likely.

Years later, Ginny had taunted him with the truth—but he’d never questioned at the time that the baby was his. She’d suckered him, grabbed the chance to get a ring from the boy Daddy had planned for her to marry. The boy she’d known could barely stand her.

As the families planned his wedding, only one thought filled his mind. How the hell do I explain this to Mary-Anne?