The Other Side of Us - By Sarah Mayberry Page 0,19

He wasn’t up for hard yards, even if he thought there was a chance in hell that he’d get to see for himself how perky and round her breasts were. He was fresh out of a marriage, heading toward an ugly divorce.

More than enough for any man to deal with.

* * *

MACKENZIE PULLED ON fresh pajamas after her shower and went to check that things hadn’t taken a sudden turn for the worse out front.

It wasn’t pretty outside, but it was definitely better, and she retreated to her bedroom and pulled the covers all the way up to her ears. The bed had been kept warm by her electric blanket and she wiggled her toes against the toasty sheets and contemplated how she would make things right with Oliver.

Because she needed to. Big-time.

Not only for the way she’d snapped at him tonight, either. From the moment she’d met him she’d been rude. Shutting the door in his face not once but twice, then getting defensive with him over Mr. Smith when she should have been thanking him for repairing the fence. She had excuses for some of it—her nausea, Gordon’s much-anticipated and hard-fought-for phone call—but the bottom line was that she’d behaved poorly.

She winced, remembering the way Oliver had described her as scary, in an “intense, I’ve-had-too-many-coffees-today kind of way.” He’d been joking, trying to ease the tension, but she was a big believer in the many-a-true-word-said-in-jest maxim and she didn’t doubt for a second that that was how he saw her: scary and intense. And, of course, overly sensitive and snappish.

Hardly a flattering portrait. In fact, it made her squirm.

The defensive part of her said to hell with what he thought of her. He wasn’t her friend, after all, or a colleague. Once she picked up the threads of her former life and moved back to Melbourne, he wouldn’t even be her neighbor.

But everything in her balked at leaving the situation the way it was. As she’d told him tonight, he was a nice guy. He’d come over to introduce himself, he’d repaired the fence without hassling her or asking for a contribution to pay for materials, he’d come riding to her rescue and downed half a glass of Scotch simply to be polite. He was funny, too, with an easy charm and a deceptively quiet, dry wit.

I like him. And I want him to like me.

The thought made her eyes pop open. She’d been so caught up in herself and her recovery that she hadn’t given any consideration to the outside world and other people for a long time. She’d deliberately sequestered herself here on the very tip of the Mornington Peninsula, shutting herself away from her friends so she could concentrate on her rehabilitation. She’d been isolated from life by her accident, and she’d made the decision to continue that isolation, and now she was...what? Lonely? Antisocial? A cranky, prickly hermit crab, holed up in her shell?

There wasn’t much she liked about this new perspective on herself and her current life.

Then do something about it.

She could invite Oliver over for dinner, for example, to say thank-you to him. And, maybe, as a byproduct, improve his impression of her. Not that she thought it was likely they would become fast friends after such a rocky start, but at least she could show him that she wasn’t a complete cow.

She could try, anyway.

* * *

MACKENZIE WOKE TO bright sunlight streaming through the gap in the curtains. Muzzy headed, she peered at the clock and saw it was nearly midday. She never slept in, but clearly her body had needed the rest. When she tried to roll over she realized how much—she ached as if she’d run a marathon, as though thugs had broken in during the night and given her a thorough going-over with baseball bats. She was used to a low level of constant pain, a sort of background hum of discomfort, but this was a whole other ball game. Her breath hissed from between her teeth as she swung her legs over the side of the bed. Moving like a much older woman, she shuffled her way to the bathroom.

She looked at her gray, washed-out face in the mirror and knew that she wouldn’t be cooking dinner for anyone in the near future. Last night had tapped whatever reserves she’d built in recent months, and unless she was hugely mistaken, her next few days would involve lots of lying around in bed and on the couch, being