Anthology - A Collection of Fanfic One-Shots

A Stitch in Time - Part 1

Caitlyn

"Mummy!"

I crouch to meet Will's greeting and am almost knocked over by the force of it. "Oof! Hey buddy. I missed you today."

"I miss you." Small arms fling around my neck in a choke hold. "Bwian an' me pwayed Kong on 'tendo!"

"That sounds like fun." He nods enthusiastically, telling me more about the game and his day before wriggling from my arms to scamper off and rejoin his cousins. My sister pours me a glass of wine and asks about my day as I take a seat at her breakfast bar.

"I've been operating practically all day," I moan, enjoying a restorative sip of wine, "and my feet are killing me. As soon as Will's in bed, I've got a hot date with my bathtub and a dozen relaxation candles."

"Sounds good. So, speaking of Kong," Talia murmurs, an intensely searching gaze thrown my way. "You do know he's in town?"

I take a couple more sips before giving her a quizzical look. "King Kong?"

Her eyes roll expressively. "Harry of England, dummy."

A shiver courses throughout my entire body. Harry of England doesn't literally mean the ginger-haired hotness that is Prince Harry - though at this moment I would give everything I own for that to be the case - but is the codename used by my siblings for Tom, a line from his performance as Henry V.

"On the coast you mean?" The films he's shot here before have been either up along the Sunshine Coast or south around the Gold Coast area.

"No, I mean here here. About five blocks away from your hospital." Talia's penetrating stare unsettles me almost as much as the news that Tom is here in Brisbane. Movie-making has become big business in Queensland in recent years, with more and more large-scale productions heading Down Under, and our older brother Aiden has been lucky enough to score small parts in some of them. He's on location in Wales at the moment though, and with working so much lately I hadn't been paying much attention to news, local or otherwise.

I know my sister is waiting for a reaction but my head is spinning with all the memories mention of Tom brings back.

We met just over seven years ago, when he was a largely unknown actor. He was tall, slim, boyishly handsome and had a mass of gorgeous strawberry-blonde curls. I was two years out of med school and having a brief break in the middle of my surgical residency. Going back home to stay with my parents for three weeks, I discovered my actor brother had brought home a friend, and the rest is history. Tom and I discovered shared passions for reading, poetry, Shakespeare and talking until three in the morning about anything and everything. We dunked each other in my parents' backyard pool, jogged along the beach together each morning and argued over pop bands and the perfection of Adele's '19'. Our attraction was immediate and it wasn't long before it became physical - in fact, I had trouble meeting my mum and dad's eyes once we'd had sex on almost every available surface in their house while everyone else was out for the day.

The axe fell shortly before his due departure when I confessed to being head over heels in love and prepared to follow him to the other side of the world; Tom claimed to have deep feelings for me too, but said he had to concentrate on his career and couldn't commit to a long-term relationship. I cried copious tears and consumed an alarming amount of a bottle of Jose Cuervo Especial Reposado before leaving two days earlier than scheduled.

"What are you going to do about it?" Talia demands, bringing me back to the present and making me wriggle uncomfortably in my seat with her beady-eyed stare.

"Absolutely nothing. Besides, he's with little Miss Singing Whatsherface now - I'm pretty sure the last thing he needs is me knocking on his door."