Dreaming Of... Australia

‘Y-yes. Thank you.’

Sam knew how much she was worried about the oral history on the thumb drive inside. He didn’t want her separated from it for longer than necessary. Her eyes drifted back to him again as the stranger shifted slightly in the ambulance and her heart swelled.

Such a good man.

But, as she watched, a fragile, porcelain-featured woman hurried through the throng of onlookers and hurled herself at Sam—her Search-and-Rescue-Sam—and threw slim arms around his neck. Those masculine arms that had kept her so safe on the hillside slid automatically around the woman’s waist and he picked her up, swinging her gently around as she buried her face into his neck.

The orange blur blocked her view again as the stranger turned to climb out of the ambulance.

‘Wait! Please!’ Aimee called out to him, and he turned back. ‘That woman … with Sam. Who is she?’

It never occurred to her not to ask, and it clearly never occurred to him not to answer, because he turned around, located them in the crowd, and then brought his gaze back to Aimee.

‘Oh, that’s Melissa,’ he said, as if that explained it all. ‘Sam’s wife.’

CHAPTER FIVE

Eleven months later

WOW. Where had the year gone?

Sam caught the sideways glance of the woman next to him and pressed a damp palm onto his right thigh to still its irritating bounce. He straightened, then shifted, then loosened and re-fixed his tie one more time. What he wouldn’t give to be hanging off the side of a mountain somewhere, rather than sitting here today … waiting. To either side of him was a mix of old and young, male and female, trained professionals and passers-by. All nervous—like him. All lined up—like him—to get their handshake from the Governor General and a commendation for bravery.

A commendation for doing what he was paid to do.

He shook his head.

He’d participated in six other rescues in the eleven months since he’d hauled Aimee Leigh’s battered car up that cliff-face. Since the ambulance doors had slammed shut on that rescue and raced off down the winding A10. No sirens. The best news in an otherwise crappy day. No sirens meant no critical emergency. No sirens meant his assessment of her injuries and his handling of them as they’d carefully winched Aimee up the rock-face had been correct. Busted leg, dislocated shoulder, chest bruising.

No sirens meant the tree had come off worse than she did.

Thank God.

Her little car had been a write-off. She’d been fond of it, judging by the gloss in its paint work and the careful condition of its interior before nature tore it to pieces, and he’d become pretty fond of it, too, by the time they’d finished examining the towed up wreck. How something that small had managed to preserve the precious life in it against an impact like that …

Pretty miraculous.

‘Gregory?’ a voice called down from the top of a small set of temporary steps. ‘Sam Gregory?’

Damn. His turn.

For lack of any other kind of moral support here today he turned to the stranger next to him and lifted his eyebrows in question. The older woman gave him a quick visual once over and a reassuring nod, then wished him luck as he pushed to his feet, tugging at the suit that felt so foreign on him.

But Mel had nagged him into wearing it.

Not that she’d know if he’d switched out of it halfway to the ceremony today, as he’d used to when he ditched school. Maybe he could have skipped the whole thing—gone sightseeing in Canberra instead. She’d have no idea.

She wasn’t here.

She’d said she would come, but she’d been gnawing her lip at the time, and he knew she had a lot going on at work. Knew she’d be here under sufferance. And that was worse than having no one here.

Or so he’d thought at the time.

‘This way Mr Gregory,’ the assistant stage manager murmured, walking with him to the edge of the enormous drapes which framed the simple setting on stage. The recipient before him was standing awkwardly in the centre of the stage as the master of ceremonies segued into amateur mobile phone video of a man—the awkward man—dangling by braced legs off the edge of a bridge in the north of their country, snatching survivors from torrential flood waters as they tumbled under it. He’d caught and saved three people that day. No one was talking about those that his numb fingers hadn’t been able to hold on to.

That’s heroic. A man who’d been servicing a farm truck one minute and was risking his life for strangers the next. No training. No equipment. No crew backing him up. No time to change his mind. The only man left standing as an inland tsunami careened through his town.

Sam flexed his shoulders. Why anyone thought he was worthy of even standing on the same stage as a guy like that …

He’d wanted to knock it back when his supervisor had first told him of the nomination. But his boss had guilted him into coming, warning him that not accepting it with grace was an insult to the men and women he worked with who’d missed out on being nominated.

‘Do it for the Unit,’ Brian had urged.

So here he was, dressed up in a monkey suit, taking one—quite literally—for the team, walking onstage right after a bona-fide hero to accept an award for just doing his job.

The man by his side signalled to his equivalent on the opposite corner of the stage as the video finished and the lights rose, and Sam’s eyes followed across the open space. There were two people over there, the second one mostly in shadow because of the bright stage lights between them, but Sam knew instantly who it would be. His chest tightened.

Aimee.

The other reason he’d come. She was here to hand him his award. He needed to look at Aimee Leigh and know that she’d made it—know his efforts had not been in vain and that she’d gone back to a normal, healthy, long life.

He needed closure.

Maybe then she’d quit stalking his dreams.

‘Stand by, Mr Gregory …’ A low murmur next to him. The live point in his throat pulsed hard enough to feel.

The MC finished his speech and the farmer on stage stepped forward—every bit as awkward and uncomfortable in his brand-new suit as Sam was—and accepted the glinting medal offered to him by the immaculately dressed Governor General.

It hit Sam then what a big deal this was, and how right his boss had been. This gong was for every single one of his colleagues who put their life on the line for others. It really wasn’t about him.

Applause—thundering applause—as the Queenslander left the stage, and then the MC glanced their way to make sure they were ready. Then he spoke in dramatic, hushed tones into the microphone. Sam took a deep breath and expelled it in a long, slow, controlled stream.

‘Our next recipient spent a long, dangerous night on a cliff-face squeezed into a teetering, crushed hatchback to make sure its driver was lifted to safety …’

Jeez. Did they have to over-sell it quite that much? There had been no teetering, and only partial crushing … Sam used the same techniques he used on rock-faces to control his breathing. In two, out two … And then suddenly the venue was echoing with more applause and he was being nudged onto the stage.

Nerves stampeded past his eardrums, merging with the drone of the audience. Hundreds of faces beamed back at him from the stalls, all of them there for someone else’s award but perfectly willing to celebrate anyone receiving a commendation that day. The MC was still speaking—going through Sam’s service record—but he wasn’t really listening. His eyes briefly lifted as the dignitary stepped forward to shake his hand, and he did his best to look sincere through his nerves.

‘Thank you, Governor General,’ he murmured.

But then his eyes slid of their own accord to the curtain on the far side of stage. The shadow had stepped out into the half-light beyond the spotlight and stood quietly waiting. Perfectly upright. All limbs accounted for.

He sucked in a deep breath. Here we go …

‘And here today, to present Sam Gregory with his Commendation for Bravery is the woman whose life he saved on that Tasmanian mountainside—Miss Aimee Leigh.’

A spotlight swung round to where Aimee hovered in the wings, and she stepped forward nervously but with determination. Sam concentrated on breathing through his nose. She wore a long lemon skirt and a feminine white blouse, and a killer pair of strap on heels that gave her a few unnecessary inches. He realised then that he’d never seen her standing up. He’d imagined her smaller, somehow, although her height was completely perfect for the strong, brave woman he’d spent the best part of a night with.

In the worst imaginable way …

Her long hair was gone—cut short. One of the things he remembered so clearly about that night was having to slide his hand under her thick crop of sweat-damp blonde hair to check her pulse, but seeing it now, trimmed back to a chaos of wisps around a naturally made up face … It was perfect. Kind of Tinker Bell.

Very Aimee.

For no good reason he suddenly craved a shot of O2—maybe it would steady him as he stood there under such intense scrutiny from the crowd in the eternity it seemed to take for Aimee to walk across the stage towards him. She’d been dressed down for her drive into the highlands a year ago, and the only thing on her skin back then had been blood and air-bag dust, so he hadn’t expected this … vision. Perfectly groomed, carefully made-up.

Beautiful.

And, best of all, one hundred percent alive.

But those glistening rose lips weren’t smiling as she stepped closer, and she was working hard to keep her lashes down, avoiding eye-contact with him or anyone. Sam’s focus flew to the two tiny fists clenched at either side of her. Something about the defensive body-language made his own muscles bunch up. Was she here under sufferance? Or did she hate public displays as much as he did?

‘Aimee has asked to be excused from making a speech,’ the MC boomed into the mic, ‘but we’re thrilled she’s here to give this commendation to the man who saved her life last year.’

Her high heels drew to a halt in front of the lectern and her green eyes lifted to the Governor General, who handed her a medal on an embroidered ribbon. Her smile as she took it from him was weak, but it dissolved completely to nothing as she steeled herself to face him. As if she was facing a firing squad.

His gut clenched. He hadn’t expected a brass band, but he’d definitely expected a smile. Or something.

‘Aimee …?’

She lifted her eyes and they were wide with caution but otherwise carefully blank. Her tightly pressed lips split into a pained smile for the crowd’s benefit and she held trembling fingers forward to present him with the medal. Sam took it from her with his left hand and slid his right into the one she offered him—perfunctorily, as if she could almost not bear to touch his hand, let alone shake it.

What the hell …?

This was a woman whose life he’d saved. A woman he’d spent hours talking with, sharing with. Whose pain he’d stroked away. Who’d kissed him in her gratitude. And she couldn’t even bring herself to smile at him now. He frowned.

Screw that.

When she went to pull her hand away he held it longer than was necessary, drawing shocked lagoon-coloured eyes back up to his. He locked onto them, and her lips fell slightly apart at his intensity.

‘You cut your hair,’ he whispered, for her benefit only. And for something to say. Then he made himself smile through the gravity of this moment.

As if his banal observation was some kind of ice-pick in the glacier of her resistance the blank nothing leached from her eyes, and they flashed briefly with confusion before filling with a bright, glinting relief he virtually basked in. Her tense façade cracked and fell away, leaving only the Aimee he remembered from the A10, and before he knew it she was stretched to her toe-tips and throwing her arms around his already tight shirt collar. Completely on instinct his hands slid around her waist and he held her close, returning her embrace.

The crowd leapt to his feet to cheer.

‘I missed you,’ she whispered into his ear, as though she’d been waiting a year to tell him that. The warmth of her breath against his skin made it pucker. ‘It’s so good to see you.’

As he held onto a woman who wasn’t his wife in front of two hundred people who weren’t his friends, Sam realised what those dreams and memories he’d been suppressing had tried to tell him.

He’d missed her, too.

Even though he’d only known her a few hours he’d missed Aimee for a year, and kept her close in his sub-conscious. Never quite on the surface—just out of it. As she’d stood in the shadows of the spotlight just now.

Waiting.

His arms tightened further, swinging her just slightly off her feet and forcing her curves more firmly up against him. His commendation dangled forgotten from his fingers.

After all, this was all the reward he needed.

Aimee’s heart had still not settled twenty minutes later as the two of them stood talking in a quiet corner backstage. She’d dreaded this for so long—but one look from those baffled, wounded blue eyes had totally washed away her resolve, rewound the past eleven-months-nine-days-and-sixteen-hours and thrown them straight back into the place where two complete strangers could feel so instantly connected.

So … It hadn’t gone away.

Had she really believed it would?

‘You must have people waiting for you?’ Aimee hinted at last, giving him a graceful exit point if he wanted one. Just in case she was wrong about the connection.

He shook his head and let the exit slide. ‘Nope. I came up to Canberra alone.’

She only noticed she’d suspended her breath when her chest forced her to exhale. ‘Your … family didn’t come with you?’ God, she was such a coward. But she didn’t want to ask. She wanted him to volunteer it openly. Honestly.

To prove he wasn’t like her father.

‘They’re all at home. They wanted to fly up but I refused. Too expensive for all of them. I’ll go see them before I head back to Tassie. Take the medal.’

‘Oh.’ What else could she say? There was only one thing she wanted to know, and she couldn’t ask it.

Why wasn’t she here?

He filled the silence where she should have spoken. ‘And the Parks Service couldn’t spare anyone because they’re covering for me being here.’ His eyes shadowed briefly. ‘And Mel couldn’t get away from work.’

Her heart thumped at both the hollow tone in his voice and the unexpected opening. ‘Mel?’ she asked, all innocence.

‘Melissa. My wife.’

It was barely a pause, but it was there. Aimee glanced down at his left hand. Still bare.

He read her expression and his fingers slid in between the buttons of his dress shirt, fished out a gold wedding band on a chain. ‘I wear it around my neck. It’s too exposed at work.’

Another one of a dozen deluded scenarios crumbled to dust. Like the one in which Sam and his wife were actually divorced but still good friends. Or the one where the orange-clad volunteer had simply made a mistake all those months ago, confused Sam with someone else. Or the one in which they all changed religion and Sam found himself in need of an additional wife.

Anything that meant he wasn’t some kind of sleazoid, disguising his married status.

Aimee sighed. The truth was Sam wasn’t hiding his wedding ring, he was protecting it. That good-guy gene at work again. ‘I’m sure she was really disappointed not to be able to get here today.’

His eyes shadowed. ‘Yes.’

The audience burst into applause for the ninth and final recipient on stage and Aimee felt her opportunity slipping away. The ceremony would be over in minutes and he’d go back to his life. Where she wasn’t invited.

‘Why didn’t you mention you were married?’ she blurted, and then winced at her own lack of art.

His leonine brow folded. ‘Rescue is a—’

Someone rushed past, calling all the recipients together for a newspaper photograph. Sam’s lips pressed together to contain his irritation. Then he flicked his eyes back to hers. They glittered with intensity even in the shadows. ‘Aimee, are you in Canberra for the day? Would you like to grab a coffee?’

That couldn’t be a good idea. Could it? She glanced at her watch and pretended to consider it.

‘I’d just like to talk. To find out how everything went after the rescue.’

The rescue. The reason she was here. Surely it wouldn’t be civil to throw his medal at him and then run. The man who’d saved her life. She nodded. ‘Sure. I have time.’

His broad smile was ridiculously rewarding. Those white, even teeth. That hint of a dimple on the right. And it was all too easy to imagine that it was relief lingering at its corners.

‘Ten minutes!’ he said, and then dashed off for his media call.

He’s married, a stern voice whispered.

‘It’s only coffee,’ she muttered under the thrum of the ceremony’s closing music out front.

But he’s married.

Aimee took a deep, mournful breath. She’d been kidding herself if she’d thought she’d put Sam out of her heart as well as her mind. He was always there somewhere, lingering. Popping up at the most inconvenient times. Just waiting to claw his way back into prominence at the first available opportunity.

Reminding her of the kind of man she still hadn’t found.

But married was more than a deal-breaker for her. Her family had been torn apart when she was a child, thanks to her father applying a rather too flexible interpretation to his vows. She was not about to start messing with someone else’s marriage.

No matter how tempting.

Just coffee, though. To say thank you properly, to apologise for the embarrassing kiss, and to wish Sam well with his life … Coffee was public and harmless and agenda-free. Coffee wasn’t like a drink at a bar. Or in a hotel room. Or over breakfast. Coffee was just coffee and a little bit of conversation. And then that would be that.

They could part as friends, instead of strangers.

Life would go back to normal.

CHAPTER SIX

‘SO you were only in for a few days? Amazing.’

Aimee lowered her skirt down her leg, back over the pin-scars high on her calf that she’d just been showing Sam. The only physical reminder she had of her night on the side of a mountain.

‘It’s good to be able to talk to you about this,’ she said, sipping her latte. ‘No one else gets it. They look at my little scars and think that somehow reflects the scale of the accident.’

‘You haven’t talked about it to anyone?’

‘The counsellor at the hospital.’ Though mostly about growing up as a human tug-of-war, as it turned out. ‘My friend Danielle.’ Mostly about you. ‘But I only gave my parents the basics …’

‘You mean you played it down.’ He smiled.

She thought about hedging, but then laughed. ‘Only because they were already so freaked out by a two a.m. phone call from your crew.’

‘Have you dealt with it at all?’

‘Yes. I’ve gone over it a hundred different ways. Things I might have done differently, should have done differently …’ She dropped her eyes away. ‘I’m pretty reconciled to having handled it as best I could.’

‘You were brilliant. You made it so easy for me to help you.’

She lifted her eyes. ‘I wanted to thank you. Right after … But you were—’ kissing your wife ‘—busy.’ She sighed. ‘The nomination was the closest I could get.’

‘You made the nomination?’

She nodded. ‘I felt like an idiot. All I knew was the date and location of the accident and your first name. But they did the rest.’

‘That changes everything.’

‘What everything?’

‘I didn’t want the award. I thought it was crazy that the state would nominate me for just doing my job. But you …’ His eyes warmed the whole front corner of the café and his smile soaked into her. ‘You I’ll accept it from.’

‘Good. You’ll never know the difference that day made for me.’

‘Tell me now.’

Her eyes flew wide as she lifted them. ‘Now?’

‘You didn’t make a speech at the awards. Make one now. Tell me what it meant to you.’

Words wouldn’t come. She opened her mouth to say something pithy, but that wouldn’t come either. She shuddered in a deep breath and began at the one place she knew she’d already taken him.

‘That night changed me, Sam. You showed me that there was a difference between taking charge and taking over. I hadn’t ever seen that before.’

Three little creases appeared between his brows.

Okay. She wasn’t explaining this at all well. She leaned forward. ‘It took me a long time to realise that the crash mats my parents surrounded me with as I was growing up was more about them than me. But by then I’d bought into all that care and concern and I’d forgotten how to be independent. Maybe I never even learned.’

Sam frowned at her and waited silently for her to continue.

‘Then I met Wayne, and I let him drive our relationship because I’d become so accustomed to other people doing my thinking for me. Taking over. Giving me instructions.’

Sam frowned. ‘Like I did.’

She shook her head. ‘You showed me that the best kind of capability doesn’t come from bossing. It comes from influencing.’

Sam frowned at her again.

‘You did it the entire time we were in the car. You wanted me to do things but you didn’t order me to. You simply gave me the facts and the reason for your request and your preference and you let me decide. Or you asked. And if I said no you respected that—even when it was the wrong decision. Then you just compensated for my glaring bad calls.’

He looked supremely uncomfortable with the praise. ‘Aimee, I just treated you the way I’d want to be treated in the same situation.’

‘Which is how?’

He thought about that. ‘Like an adult. With all the facts.’ Then his expression cleared. ‘Like a team.’

‘Yes! I have never in my life felt like I belonged to a team, where we worked together for a solution. It was always about compliance or conflict.’ She held up her two hands as though they were scales, with one or other of those words weighing heavily in them.

‘Well, I’m glad. We were a team that night. We had equal stakes the moment I climbed into that car, so we deserved equal say on what went down.’

She leaned forward earnestly. ‘See—that’s a novelty to me. The whole idea of equity. I love it.’

He seemed enchanted by her excitement. But a little bemused. ‘I’m glad.’

His gentle teasing warmed her every bit now as it had back in the car. ‘Don’t laugh at me. This is revolutionary. I don’t ever want to go back to being that person who needed permission to get through the day. I still shake my head that I let it happen at all. You saved so much more than my physical self on the mountain.’

‘Don’t go canonising me just yet. I’m sure you were already halfway to this realisation yourself.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You were heading up to the highlands to reassess your life. You’d broken off your dud relationship. You were managing your parents.’

If by ‘managing’ he meant avoiding …’Okay, so I wasn’t starting from zero, but it took that accident to really spotlight what was wrong with my life. And you were wielding that spotlight.’

He grinned. ‘Nice analogy.’

‘Thank you. It’s the storyteller in me.’ She finished her coffee and signalled for another before turning back to Sam, her biggest and most exciting secret teetering on her tongue. ‘Anyway, that’s why I’m so grateful. It’s changed the way I do my work, too.’