Nobody but Him (32 page)

‘Plans for Windswept are still on course and Blackburn and Son Developments hopes to start advertising locally in the next few weeks for workers to begin construction on the site. Thank you, Debbie, anytime. Are there? Oh, that’s lovely, isn’t it?’ Ry walked to her, his feet padding softly on the carpet.

‘Yes, I’ll make sure he lets you know when the jobs are advertised. You’re right … local people will be very interested in applying. I’ll tell him. Yes, you can quote me as a spokesperson for Mr Blackburn. It was lovely to speak to you too, Debbie.’

Julia pressed the keypad to end the call and walked to Ry, the phone in her outstretched hand. He took it and tossed it onto the sofa.

‘How did you do that?’ he asked, almost with disbelief.

‘It’s what I do everyday in my world, Ry. She’s just someone doing her job. Debbie said the paper has been getting lots of calls from locals, wondering how Dan is doing. They know he’s been working with you on Windswept and they all heard about the accident. They’re genuinely concerned about him.’

‘Thanks.’ There were shadows on his face, his blue eyes washed out and bloodshot. ‘I mean it.’ Julia moved closer, threaded her arms around his waist, wanting his strong arms around her, needing him close. With her cheek pressed against the smooth and warm skin of his chest, she could feel the rhythm of his heart surge through her.

‘Debbie said there are flowers at the place where the accident happened. People down there know better than anyone how dangerous country roads can be.’

He pulled her tighter to him, one hand in her hair, holding her to his heart. ‘So do you.’

They stood motionless in the middle of his apartment for a long while. Then he took her hand and they walked to the bedroom, side by side. He didn’t need to put into words what he was asking. She could see it in his face, his defeated, slumped shoulders, the rise and fall of his chest, the stubble on his jaw, the sorrow in his eyes. They slid in next to each other under the soft cotton sheets and curled up as close as they could, arms and legs entwined, Julia’s leg draped over his knees, one hand splayed across his chest so she could feel the rise and fall of his breathing. His arm was tight around her shoulders, and his head turned into her soft curls.

‘You’re amazing, Julia Jones, you know that?’

‘You’re pretty amazing yourself, Ryan Blackburn.’

‘I need to … I just … thank you.’ His voice was low and rough. ‘For everything.’

She kissed his chest softly and when she turned to him, he pressed his lips to hers so tenderly and lovingly that she wanted to hold on to the soft feel of him forever. She let out a chest-deep breath and felt tiredness wash over her in a wave.

They lay in silence, the noises of the city coming to life seeping up from the streets twelve floors below. Julia squeezed her eyes closed. If only time could stop at this very moment, freeze-frame it and leave them exactly where they were, holding each other as tightly as two people possibly could, inhaling each other’s breath, not knowing where one body ended and the other began. If time stopped in a freeze-frame, there couldn’t be bad news about Dan. She wouldn’t be going back to Melbourne.

And she could remain forever in the arms of the man she loved.

Yes, she loved him. Admitting it to herself was easier than she’d realised it would be. She didn’t want to fight it anymore. Hadn’t the events of the past year — and especially of the previous twelve hours — proven that life was delicate and short? She loved him. With her heart and mind and soul. And it didn’t scare her, not in the slightest. It gave her hope.

‘You know …’ Ry started quietly, kissing her forehead softly and holding his soft lips on her skin. ‘The guy lying in that intensive care bed didn’t even look like Dan.’

‘I don’t really know him but I’d bet that someone as stubborn as him won’t let his life slip away so easily. He’ll get through this.’

‘He’s stubborn, all right.’

Julia moved her hand from his chest to the curve of his neck, nestling it in the heat there. ‘Just hold on to what the nurse said.’

‘Yeah.’

‘He’s young and strong.’

‘Julia …’ He hesitated, his lips moving against her ear. ‘I don’t know what I would have done without you last night.’

‘Ry …’

‘I don’t know what I’ve done without you my whole life.’ His voice dropped to a whisper. ‘Don’t go.’

She felt them before she heard them. His shoulders began to tremble and his fingers dug into her skin, and he turned into her, quietly sobbing. She gently caressed his cheek, his small scar, catching his tears with her fingers, and then kissing the rest away with soft lips. She held him and cried with him until they were spent, their limbs and breath and hearts entwined.

The next four days were a blur of trips back and forth to the hospital. Ry, Barbra and Dan’s parents Bob and Joan took turns sitting with Dan in the Intensive Care Unit as he lay unconscious, the ventilator breathing for him and the monitors recording every breath and every heartbeat.

Julia shifted into high gear. She organised them all, coordinated shifts, drove the half hour to and from the hospital and Ry’s city apartment, ensured the fridge was stocked from the city markets nearby, washed clothes and bed linen, and relayed messages from Lizzie to Ry about the pub when they were really urgent. She’d become fast friends with Ry’s executive assistant Fiona, keeping her in touch with Dan’s condition so Fiona could tell everyone at BSD. Julia was touched that Fiona had organised flowers be sent to Ry’s apartment for Bob and Joan. Julia decided Fiona was a woman after her own heart.

Meanwhile, Julia handled everything else like the crisis management professional she was. But this time, it all felt real. She wasn’t working to save a company’s arse when one of its managers had done something dopey or ripped people off. It wasn’t about helping important people avoid public scrutiny over mistakes they or their over-indulged children had made on drunken nights out.

This was personal. She was genuinely helping a family negotiate a real crisis in their lives. Share prices weren’t at stake, nor public reputations or a businessman’s status. And Julia realised, with a tug at her heart, that it was easily the most rewarding thing she’d ever done.

In the few hours a day they weren’t at his bedside, Dan’s parents were staying in the second bedroom in the apartment. In a few short days, Julia had come to feel a great affection for them. Bob was a barrel-chested retired farmer and shearer, the skin on his face and arms the colour of burnt toffee, with the softest, smoothest hands Julia had ever held. Joan was a delicate woman, no more than five feet tall, with slim hips and the practical manner of a farmer’s wife.

The modern white dining table in Ry’s apartment had come to be a place of comfort and warmth for all of them, of late night hot chocolates and whisky, tears and embraces, as they’d conferred on the latest news from the hospital. Little snippets of previously meaningless information became suddenly all-important as they struggled to find hope in Dan’s condition.
His BP was steadier today
.
Yes
, someone else would add,
and the doctors looked happy after they examined him this afternoon
.
I thought I saw his eyes flicker when the nurse was checking the line from his chest.
Small glimmers of hope in a seemingly hopeless situation, but they had all convinced themselves that these small and positive signs would coalesce into a bigger, more promising picture.

Julia found herself alone in Ry’s apartment while Ry and the McSwaines remained with Dan in hospital. She’d just finished stacking the breakfast dishes into the dishwasher when her phone vibrated on the bench. She’d made a habit of keeping it nearby in case Ry called with news. She had felt a desperate desire to be within reach of him at all times.

When she saw the number on the display, a feeling of dread settled. Her Melbourne life was about to come crashing into her Middle Point one and she wasn’t sure she wanted it to. Julia picked up her phone and tried desperately to summon some enthusiasm.

‘Ivy. How are you?’ Ivy Halliday was her boss at the consultancy firm in Melbourne, the woman who’d employed her for more than a decade. She’d been more than a boss. She’d been a mentor, both professionally and personally.

‘Julia. It’s so good to hear your voice. How are things in sleepy old Adelaide?’

Julia flinched. Although she’d freely described the city like that a few times herself in the past, perhaps more than a few, it sat awkwardly with her now. Why was she suddenly so defensive about the place?

‘I’m fine, Ivy, and what about you? How are things at the company? Is everyone well?’ Julia tried to slip back into her corporate conversation mode, but given what had happened, found the small talk excruciating.

‘We’re flat-chat here as usual, Julia. That’s why I’m calling. I need you to come in a little earlier than usual on your first Monday back at work. I’ve just set up a breakfast meeting with a potential new client. One of Melbourne’s biggest law firms. I can’t wait to hear what they need help with.’

Julia stilled. ‘
Monday?
’

‘Yes, they need to see us first thing next week.’

Shit.
Next week. And then she remembered. She had a flight booked the next day to go back to Melbourne. And then she would well and truly be back to her old life. The one she now felt so disconnected from. Since the accident she hadn’t thought once about reading a newspaper or listening to the radio news or going back to work or any single piece of her old life. Every minute had been consumed by the catastrophe of Dan’s accident, by being the glue that held his family and dear friends together. How could she leave them now?

‘A new client, huh?’

‘Yes, we’re due over at their company boardroom at seven-thirty a.m. so I thought I’d give you a heads up about the early start. You probably need some time to dust off the old home town and get back to the city.’

I don’t know what I’ve done without you my whole life. Don’t go.

Ry’s words had become like a recurring dream in her head. They hadn’t had the chance to talk in the days since he breathed the words into her ear but that didn’t mean she hadn’t pondered the same question a hundred times.
Does he really want me to stay?
They’d been in turmoil when he’d said them, just home from the hospital, the sight of Dan lying motionless firmly in their heads. He’d been upset, she rationalised, and said things he would probably take back if he could.

But he hadn’t taken them back and she’d seen that same sentiment there in his searching eyes every time he’d looked at her since. Every quick look, every glance was laden with meaning, of intent, of waiting for an answer to the question that was hanging in the air between them.

Julia had never believed in karma, thought instead that things happened because they happened. She didn’t believe either in grand plans or divine conspiracies. She’d always had to make her own luck, had to create her own life.

The first time, it meant walking away from her home and from Ry. This time, it meant opening herself up to the possibilities of a new chapter, with Ry in it.

Julia had never felt surer of anything in her life.

The thought of going back to Melbourne, to her little cottage, to her acquaintances, to her self-involved clients, to the crazy hours and all-nighters, left a sick feeling in her stomach. And brought a steely resolve. She realised at that moment that she had nothing more to prove to anyone.

There was only one answer to her boss’s question. And as she realised it, a smile blossomed from deep down in her gut and made it all the way to her pale lips, crinkling her eyes and almost blowing the top off her head with the sheer simplicity of it. She took a deep breath and knew there was no turning back.

‘Ivy, we need to talk.’

Ry sat with his mother at Dan’s bedside. They watched the patient intently, lulled by the sound of the alarms on the monitors and the noise from outside the cubicle, waiting for any sign of wakefulness. The nurse had just reported that his sedation was being slowly reduced. Once he came around there would be a battery of further tests and prodding and poking to investigate his injuries. As Ry took in every rise and fall of his chest, he wondered if Dan would wake up just like characters on TV did, with a dramatic fluttering of his eyes and a well-written gag. Cue laughs, sighs of relief from loved ones and cut to an ad-break. Crisis over.

Dan would like that, he thought with a smile, and would probably demand that George Clooney play him in the film. He felt a chuckle and let it come out. For the first time in days, Ry felt a lightness, just a little, enter his head. Barbra squeezed her son’s hand and he squeezed it right back.

‘He must hurt like a son of a bitch.’

‘I’m sure he does, darling, and he will for a while yet. But the last word from the doctor was good.’

‘Looks like he’ll be moving out of Intensive Care pretty soon, maybe even today. As soon as he’s conscious, they’ll take the tube out and he should be able to talk.’

‘It’s hard to believe what’s happened, isn’t it?’ Barbra’s voice choked on a cry and Ry slipped his arm around his mother, pulling her closer.

‘I’ve been here everyday and I still can’t believe it. I keep imagining there’s another Dan out there somewhere in Adelaide, his evil twin, who’s drinking and partying and having all the fun while this Dan lies here unconscious.’

‘Two of him? There’s a thought.’ Barbra chuckled too, and then turned to her son, looked intently at him.

‘When were you last home, darling?’

Ry could feel her eyes drilling into him as only a mother’s could.

‘You need some sleep. You look awful.’

‘You think?’

‘Why don’t you go home? Get some sleep and see your girl.’

My girl.
His mother was losing her touch. He was amazed it had taken so long for that subject to come up in conversation, stunned at her self-control. The last time she’d seen him with Julia, they’d marched out of the pub and onto the street to argue. Whatever it was they had going on then had been over before it had barely begun. And now, Julia was staying in his apartment, basically managing Team Dan. And his mother hadn’t asked a question up until now. This lack of interest in his love life was unprecedented.