“Is something else on your mind?”
Ryan had never lied to Anna and had no intention of starting, particularly on the cusp of their wedding. On the other hand, he saw no reason to worry her if a simple solution presented itself. That being the case, he tugged her against him so that the top of her head tucked snugly beneath his chin and wrapped his arms around her protectively.
“Nothing to worry about,” he murmured, rubbing his cheek against her soft hair.
He hoped it was true.
*
Phillips muted the evening news when MacKenzie walked back into the living room. He wrapped a sturdy arm around her shoulders as she sank onto the sofa beside him and snuggled into his chest. He noticed she’d washed and dried her hair into shining red waves and he could smell the aroma of coconut body cream on her skin. Until recently, it was all he could do to help her get out of bed in the mornings and his heart soared with optimism. “Nice bath, love?”
“Mm,” she listened to the strong thud of his heartbeat and felt relaxed for the first time in months.
“How did it feel to be back on the job today?”
MacKenzie heard his heartbeat quicken and guessed he’d been worried about her.
“I had a few uncomfortable moments,” she admitted, thinking back to the panic she’d felt walking through the trees earlier in the day. “I needed to do it, otherwise these walls would start to become a prison. It felt good to be part of the team again.”
Phillips kissed the top of her head.
“You never stopped being part of the team.”
She nodded, watching silent newscasters mouthing their report on the television. The screen cut to images of drunken revelry in the city centre and a straitlaced reporter reciting statistics about binge drinking.
MacKenzie reached across to stab the remote control and the screen went blank. What she was about to say required no distractions.
“Frank, you’ve been a rock these last four months.”
“Oh, I hardly—” he began but she cut him off firmly.
“No, let me get this out. I want you to know how much it’s meant to me, knowing you were beside me every step of the way. Hearing you breathing next to me when I woke up scared during the night or knowing you were only a phone call away helped me to push through. I don’t know what I would have done without you.”
“You’d have been just fine,” he said quietly.
“I’ve always been one to manage alone,” she agreed. “The women in my family were so constrained, so tied to their roles, when I grew up I never wanted to rely on anyone or become too dependent.”
“The day you become the Little Woman will be the day hell freezes over.”
She smiled against the side of his cotton shirt.
“I know I’ve been difficult at times.”
Phillips sat back so he could look directly into her sad green eyes.
“You are one of the strongest people I’ve ever known. What you went through…” His jaw clenched as he thought of it. “Some people would have buckled but not you. Not my Denise.”
Her eyes glittered with emotional tears.
“I’ve got two questions I want to ask you, Frank.”
“Aye, lass?”
“The first is whether you’ll teach me to box. I’ve done a bit of kickboxing in my time, but I’m talking about the real thing. I never want to feel weak or defenceless ever again.”
Phillips simply stared, momentarily lost for words.
He’d grown up sparring with his friends on the street and had spent many of his formative years training at Buddle’s Boxing Gym, which was a local institution in Newcastle. He knew a thing or two about the sport and he considered himself an enlightened man in all things, but he’d never been asked to teach a woman, especially one he happened to love.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he said, gruffly.
“What makes you think you would? It’s only sport, Frank.” There was a light of challenge in her eyes, one he knew very well. “Perhaps you’re worried I’ll run rings around you, boyo?”
He grinned.
“Alright, you’re on. We can start whenever you like.”
Pleased, she leaned over to plant a smacking kiss on his ruddy cheek.
“What was the second question?”
“Well…”
Phillips detected a serious tone to her voice and wondered whether he’d forgotten to empty the dishwasher or left the toilet seat up.
MacKenzie watched panic flit across his face and almost laughed. Instead, she folded her arms across her chest and looked him dead in the eye.
“I want to know what your intentions are.”
His eyebrows flew into his receding hairline.
“I—my intentions?”
“I might be a modern woman, Frank Phillips, but I want to know how much longer you expect me to carry on living in sin with you like this.”
She tightened the belt of her towelling robe, for added effect.
“Let’s not forget I’m a good Catholic,” she continued, although she couldn’t remember the last time she’d stepped inside a church other than to investigate a crime.
Phillips recovered himself quickly.
“Well, if that’s the way you feel about it, I’d better tell you that I expect you to marry me as soon as possible and I won’t take ‘no’ for an answer. As it happens, I asked your Da a couple of weeks ago and he tells me that I’ll do right enough.”
MacKenzie felt a lump rise in her throat.
“You did? Frank, you know, I was only joking, you don’t have to—”
He silenced her with a brush of his lips against hers, then heaved himself off the sofa.
“Wait there.”
He was gone for a minute, leaving MacKenzie to wonder whether she was ready, whether he was ready and whether he still loved his first wife who had passed away a few years earlier. Thoughts and doubts circled her mind until he returned with a small black box clutched in his hand.
He hovered there, not quite knowing where to begin.
“Denise, you know I was married before.”
“Yes, Frank, and it’s alright. I understand if you don’t feel the same—”
“Will you let me get a word in edgewise?”
He laughed and shook his head.
“Laura was a wonderful woman,” he said honestly. “It hurt, more than I can say, when cancer took her from me. You probably remember how it was,” he added, for they had been work colleagues at the time.
She nodded soberly.
“I remember.”
“I grieved for her and, for a while, I didn’t think I’d be able to love like that again.” He looked over to where she fiddled nervously with the ends of her dressing gown. “But I never bargained on you, Denise. It hit me like an arrow between the eyes, the way I feel for you. Even in the old days when I fought against it, you’d find a way to get under my skin and make me feel like a daft teenager. I don’t like to think of how empty my life would be without you in it.”
Her lips trembled and he came to perch on the sofa beside her.
“Four months ago, I thought I had lost you. I said to myself, if we both came through it, I wasn’t going to be frightened of loving again. If you didn’t want to get married, that was OK. That was just fine, so long as you loved me as I love you.”