Kate stiffened. This guy, who couldn’t put Tilly’s needs before his own was telling Kate what Tilly could and couldn’t do? As she looked down at Tilly’s small hand covered by his, irritation consumed her. “Of course she can’t teach,” she said. “She isn’t coming home to work—she’s coming home to heal.”

“I’m starting to feel it now,” Tilly said, wrapping both arms around her middle. “It feels tight. Crampy.”

From the bench at the stern of the ferry, Kate looked out at the cliffs of Mornington. Beside her, Tilly shivered slightly. Wrapping an arm around her, Kate encouraged Tilly’s head onto her shoulder. Tilly sighed.

“The rocking probably isn’t helping,” Kate said, revelling in the warmth of Tilly’s body pressed tight against her side. “It’s rough out today.” She could sympathise. Running on such little sleep, the choppy sea was twisting her own stomach into knots.

“I just want to be home with you already,” Tilly said softly. “That’s all.”

A rush of possessiveness set a heat low in her belly, made her feel like she was on fire.

“Did you worry?” Tilly asked. “When I didn’t come home last night on the ferry?”

Kate swallowed. Worry? She’d worried—that Tilly was avoiding her, that suddenly Tilly found herself so consumed by her attraction to him that she’d forgotten all about Kate. She’d been so wired with jealousy that she’d barely slept a wink. Her greatest concern though, had been that she was quickly losing herself to something more powerful than her self-control, something that was ready and strong enough to destroy her, destroy the relationship she had with Tilly. That worry had yet to settle.

“Yeah,” she sighed, tightening her arm around Tilly’s waist. “I worried.”

Chapter Twelve

“You’ll tell me if I hurt you?”

Tilly looked down her lashes at Kate. Pulling the band of her pyjama shorts lower and baring more skin to welcome Kate’s touch, she nodded. The plastic lid of the toilet seat crackled beneath Kate’s weight as she shifted, gaze focused on the black thread Tilly had asked her to remove from the flat plane of her abdomen.

Two weeks had passed since the surgery. At Tilly’s checkup, her GP had suggested leaving the sutures in a little longer—in a few days, she could remove them herself after a shower. It wouldn’t be difficult, he’d said. Palms sweating, Kate pulled her gaze from the plum-coloured scar and met Tilly’s stare. “You promise to say something?” she asked.

Tilly rolled her eyes, inching closer between Kate’s splayed knees. “Yes.”

In her tight sleeping singlet, a sweat broke out between her breasts. “You know, on second thought, maybe we should do this in the morning light…”

“Kate, just do it.”

Kate swiped her glasses off and placed them on the counter.

“You were there,” Tilly said. “The doctor said it would be simple. I won’t even feel it.”

I wouldn’t count on that. Kate bit the tip of her tongue and reached out to the inch-long line that descended from Tilly’s belly button. At the brush of Kate’s fingers against her skin, Tilly’s belly contracted.