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I look at him, eyebrows raised.
He laughs. “It would have been too noisy for them anyway. They prefer a quieter soirée. Much better that they just leave the chequebook and run.” He gives me a wicked side-eye. “And at least they didn’t puke my birthday present down the drain.”
I roll my eyes.
“Don’t worry,” he says, tucking me more closely into his side. “I’m flying out tomorrow to join them for a few days.”
He wraps his arm around me. I want to protest at the thought of him going anywhere, to exhort that we should make the most of this night, but the heat from his body and the weight of the quilt are melting my exhausted bones. I try to focus as the extortionate rockets, Roman candles, and Catherine wheels dance across the sky, but my eyelids are just too heavy. Brilliant colors dance into my dreams as warm and snug on the sagging pool house bed, I drift into sleep, wrapped safely in the arms of this gentle giant.
CHAPTERONE
Ali
“Whatever were you thinking?”
I frown. Even that small movement is enough to set my head throbbing.
“What?”
“Ice skating. You. Why?”
I squint at Josh and nod in the direction of my niece, who is sitting on a plastic chair in the corner of the hospital cubicle, eyes wide at the sight of her sporting hero. And that sporting hero is not me, I might add.
“Really, you love ice skating?” Josh asks Anna with a smile.
“Yes,” she chirps. “I’m an ice dancer. I take lessons at the rink. But I really love ice hockey.”
“Oh, wow. I play ice hockey, you know.”
“I know. You are Josh Dunbar. You play center for the Ptarmigans. You are awesome.”
Josh laughs and runs his hand sheepishly through his hair. “Thank you…er…?”
“Anna,” my niece declares, sticking out her hand primly. Goodness, she reminds me of her mother. “Anna Watson.”
“Well, thank you very much, Anna,” says Josh, shaking her hand. “I really appreciate that. I hope your uncle will be bringing you along to the New Year derby game?”
“You bet he will!” says Anna, slightly ominously. I roll my eyes, thankful that I’ve already secured the tickets.
“Well, if your uncle hasn’t put a big hole in our ice rink then I’m sure we’ll be good to go,” jokes Josh. Anna giggles. “You know,” he continues. “I would have thought you would have been a rugby fan, Anna. A Gossie gal, maybe? Your uncle was quite a good rugby player in his day, you know…”
“Gee, thanks,” I mutter.
Anna gives me the look that children reserve for the adults closest to them in their lives…the one that suggests that they never had a life before them.
“Nah,” she says. “He’s old. And rugby is boring.”
I grimace. Where did I go wrong with that child? I can’t argue though. Right now, I’m feeling every single one of my forty-one years. Every muscle in my body aches with the impact of the spectacular fall I effected at the edge of the Oakheart Glen ice rink. Home of the Ptarmigans. Scene of me going straight onto my face trying to stop before I crashed into a barrier. Place where I acquired the new scar that I am henceforth going to be sporting on my forehead.
Anna winks at me. She’s kidding. The seven-year-old joker is having me on. What a day.
“Mr Whyte?”
The cubicle curtain parts, and a nurse enters. When her dark eyes flick up from her clipboard, I expect them to drift to Josh. Josh Dunbar is six feet of muscle and charm. Women love him. He reminds me of someone I used to know… But they don’t. They remain fixed on me. In fact, they are boring into me quite intensely. I realise that she is waiting for a response.
“Yes, Nurse…?”
She looks at me. “Jones,” she says, rather tersely.
