Just Not Mine by Rosalind James Page B

the game. I had a girlfriend at the time, yeh. She’s not my girlfriend anymore, so you don’t have to worry.”
    “You missed t wo games,” Amelia corrected him. “And you missed mine too, my netball, but it doesn’t matter so much for me. Charlie needs a committed adult male in his life, though, or he’ll—”
    “I know,” Hugh groaned. “Or h e’ll join a gang. I won’t miss again, how’s that? If I do ever go on a date again, by some miraculous chance, I’ll make sure I’m home. Geez. I had no idea you two were watching so closely. And I just decided the no-gossip rule was a good one. Stop talking about me.”
    “We’re just talking to Josie,” Charlie said. “Talking to Josie isn’t gossip. She’s not strangers.”
    “Well,” Hugh said, “not anymore, she’s not.”

Role Playing
    It was Friday night, another weekend with the kids stretching ahead. No Josie-projects to make this one more entertaining, either, because she was gone.
    He’d seen her wheeling her suitcase out her front door when he’d pulled up from his doctor’s visit, had jumped out and got over there fast, but not before she’d humped the clearly heavy thing down her front steps.
    “Can I give you a hand with that?” he asked her. “And, yeh,” he added, laughing at her a little, “a hand is what it’ll be. But not for long, because this cast is coming off in two weeks.”
    “ Oh, that’s good news.” She surrendered the suitcase to him, which made him unreasonably happy, then popped the boot of her little car so he could give the case a heave and a shove from his knee, lodge it safely inside before reaching up to slam the boot again.
    “Although you’re right, ” she said, watching him, “you can do a lot with one hand. But I’m sure you’ll be happy to have two again.”
    “I will. Bloody nuisance, and then I can start to work on getting fit again.”
    She was smiling at him. “Because you’re so shockingly out of condition.”
    “Not fit, and definitely not rugby fit,” he said. “Not yet. But I will be, no worries.”
    “ Well, I admit, I checked you out online last night,” she said, “and I believe you. It must take some training to be able to go that hard for eighty minutes, and you always do seem to go eighty minutes, don’t you?”
    “That’s what it’s all about,” he said. “Going hard for as long as it takes.”
    He saw the faint flush rise, saw her lose the smile, and, even as he felt his blood quicken, was sorry he’d said it, because she so clearly didn’t want to hear it. She wanted a good neighbor, so he worked on that. “You off for the weekend? Business or pleasure?”
    “ Pleasure all the way. Paying a long-overdue visit to my partner in Aussie,” she said, and that was a pretty clear message too.
    “ He’s that actor fella I heard about last night?” he asked, doing his best to keep his tone casual.
    “ Derek Alverson. He’s doing a film over there. They’ve been on location for weeks now, northern Queensland, deep in the bush, but they’re back in Sydney, got a weekend off at last, and he asked me to join him.”
    “He’ll be happy to see you, I’m sure.”
    “Hope so . And I’d best be off. Oh—” She turned, half-into the car. “How were the vegies?”
    “Brilliant. Healthy. Have a good weekend.” He lifted a hand and watched as she indicated, pulled into the street, and drove away to do it.

    So, no. He wouldn’t be looking at her, at the golden skin glowing against that white dress, at the waves of hair falling down her back, at the shape of her showing for a moment when she crouched in front of the candle she’d lit, at her turning to smile at him after she did it, making his heart skip a beat. Because she would be with her partner. Because he would be the one taking her to dinner tonight, the one looking at her in the candlelight. And the one taking her to bed, too, which Hugh wasn’t enjoying thinking about one little bit.
    So he stopped, or he