Unsuitable

in the sand she could newly sprint on and played at paradise with Reece while she waited for the rest of her life to unwind, for the email or the call that’d tell her not to bother coming back to work and how much her last pay would contain. She needed to tell him about that. But talking about it with anyone but Les made it real and she wasn’t ready for real when she had Reece and the fantasy of a beautiful life.

Because it was a fantasy. The high of a different drug. Too, too good to be true. Too true to survive. Reece looked at her like he was in love with her. He touched her like he wanted her to know it. And everything he did was designed to prove it. And that couldn’t possibly be right.

What did she offer him, a woman with a kid, older, single by choice, and focused on a job that was about to disappear, a career in limbo?

But she dreamed about it, waking dreams. While she sat reading and he played with Mia. While she played with Mia and he cooked. She watched him manage a tantrum or stand right back so she could, and she knew they’d created a family, the structure too interwoven to ever go back the way it had been, even if she could afford to keep it.

Once the money went, broke them up, was it fair to make him wait until she got a new job and could afford to have him back? If he wasn’t here as her carer, would he want to be here as her lover?

She heard the TV go on in the other room. She knew he’d settle Mia and come to her. He didn’t know their time for this was going to run out, or how anxious that made her.

Mia whined. He placated. Mia threw her fire engine on the floor, a clatter of bells and metal, incoherent screaming, and he spoke a little sternly. His no nonsense voice, deeper with authority, but never menace. She imagined him using it on her in bed and pressed her legs together.

That’s how he found her, ridiculously turned-on by the man who’d just disciplined her daughter. She was a bad mother, a shocking employer, and a redundant employee, but if he touched her that would all go away and she’d feel drugged with happiness again.

He came straight for her, miraculously as strung-out for her touch as she was for his. The look on his face was pure determination, those beautiful green eyes gone dark. His hand went to the back of her neck, fingers sifting through her hair. He kissed her with enough force she heard imaginary bells ringing through her head.

Real was the sound of Mia talking to the TV in the next room. Real was Reece’s hand over her breast and his tongue tipping the roof of her mouth. Real was the smudge of texta on his jaw and the smell of banana in his skin.

He groaned into the kiss, his arm tight around her back, pulling her to her toes. “I want to take a bath with you.”

She laughed. They would never both fit in her bath and he had to know it. He wouldn’t fit on his own, but she’d like to see him try.

“I want to spend a whole weekend naked in bed with you. We’ll only get up for bathroom breaks and to answer the door to the pizza guy.”

That wasn’t immediately possible either, but it sounded like heaven.

“I want to give you ten orgasms in a row.”

She gasped. She’d be back in hospital needing oxygen, but with a little concerted effort he could probably pull that off.

“I want to eat chocolate off your skin, lick whiskey off your lips.”

Now that they could do.

He ran his tongue around the edge of her ear. “I want to be with you and Mia always.”

She pushed him away. “Reece.” She shook her head; he rattled her senses. He couldn’t want that.

He said, “I want that,” like he knew her thoughts, and he could because her doubt was all over her in creased brows and shivers and rigid arms holding him back.

“I love Mia.” He dropped his hold on her and let her have her distance. “I am in love with you.”

All the heat left her body. “You can’t love me. It’s not real. This is just a, just a, holiday romance, just a, look it’s obvious we might, that it’s proximity, and you can’t.” She stopped babbling and looked him in the eye. “You can’t.”

“Shocked you there, did I?” He let his voice drop soft and low.

“You’re conflagrating care and sex into something bigger.” She sounded shrill in comparison, with a rising note of panic.

“Conflagrating?”

“Reece, you just can’t.”

He did that thing where he planted his feet wide, folded his arms, made himself an immoveable object. When he did it with Mia it was her cue to throw herself at him, climb all over him. When he did it with her he was saying, go on, prove me wrong.

“Why can’t I love you, Audrey?”

“Because I’m too old for you.”