He shook himself. ‘I mean what about the puppies?’
She seized a tea towel, shook it out and hung it on its rack. ‘When they’re ready to be weaned I’ll come and collect them. If there are any issues let me know. I’ve left my mobile number, my email address and my grandmother’s contact details beside the phone in the in the hall.’
She didn’t meet his eyes. Not once.
His heart started to thump—hard. ‘Is that where you’ll be staying?’
She slung her handbag across her shoulder. ‘It’s my childhood home.’
He suddenly found it difficult to swallow. He stared at that handbag. She was really leaving?
‘Goodbye, Mac.’
He had to swallow the bellow that rose up inside him. They couldn’t end like this! There’d been so much promise and—
She reached out as if to touch him, but her hand dropped short. ‘I really do wish you well. I hope...’
What did she hope?
‘I hope that you succeed.’
She spun on her heel then, and shot through the laundry and out of the back door. He lumbered after her, his limbs heavy and clumsy, as if they didn’t belong to him. She was so calm, so cool and untouchable. As if she didn’t care. She was tearing him to pieces.
A black knot of acid burned through the centre of him. ‘Is this really so easy for you?’ The words left him on a bellow. ‘Don’t you feel the slightest sting or throb? Don’t you—?’
‘Easy?’ She swung towards him, her face contorting. ‘Easy to walk away from dreams you let me believe were possible? Dreams that—?’
Her eyes filled and her pain rose up all around him.
‘Easy?’ She lifted her hands as if to beat out her pain on his chest.
He wanted to wrap her in his arms and make her pain go away, soothe the desperation in her eyes and the despair that twisted her lips.
‘Jo...’ He swore.
‘Easy?’ She thumped her chest. ‘When you’ve broken something inside me that I’m afraid I’ll never be able to fix?’
His mouth dried. His stomach knotted. He wanted to hide from the accusation in her eyes, from the anguish there—anguish he’d caused.
‘I’m sorry, Jo. I—’
She twisted her hands in the collar of his shirt and slammed her lips to his. The world tilted. She explored every last millimetre of his lips with a hunger that had the wind rushing in his ears, firing his every nerve-ending to life. She deepened the kiss as if her very life depended on it, and everything he had reached towards her.
But she pushed him away.
‘I tried to play nice, Mac, and keep it civilised, but you made it impossible! I hope that kiss torments you every night for as long as you hole up out here.’
She needn’t fear. It would burn him through all eternity. As would the tears in her eyes and the pain that turned her lips white.
‘That’s it, Mac. That’s us done.’
She slammed into her car, started up the motor and roared away.
He stared after her, her words ringing in his ears. That’s us done.
Behind him Bandit set up a whine that became a howl.
Mac spun around. ‘You’re too late, you dumb dog. You should’ve told her you loved her while you had the chance.’
Mac picked up a rock and hurled it with all his might at a fencepost. He kicked a tuft of grass, jarring his ankle when he connected a little too well with it. He yelled out his pain and frustration at the top of his lungs. But it didn’t help.
The end. Finito. This was as far as he and Jo would ever go. He stood there, arms at his sides, breathing hard. Jo was gone. The earth might as well spin off its axis for all the sense that made.
He waited for the sky to darken and a curtain to descend about him. It didn’t. The sun kept shining, the breeze continued to rustle a path through the native grass, and on the beach waves kept rushing up onto the sand.
His heart shrivelled to the size of a pea.
Jo was gone.
It was his fault.
And there was nothing he could do about it.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
MAC FINISHED THE cookbook in a fortnight rather than the projected month.
A morning walk, an afternoon walk and making sure he ate three square meals a day still left him with a lot of time on his hands. So he worked.
He didn’t sleep much.
He sent the manuscript off to his editor and then cleaned the house from top to bottom. Having neglected it completely since Jo had left, that took him two full days.
On the third morning after finishing the cookbook, with nothing planned for the day, he stared at the omelette he’d made for breakfast and found he couldn’t manage so much as a bite. With a snarl, he grabbed his coffee and stormed out to the veranda.