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Connor again. Jaz didn’t want him fighting her battles—she wanted him to stay as far from her as possible. He wasn’t getting a second chance to break her heart. Not in this lifetime! But she could barely breathe, let alone talk.
Didn’t come near your mother for years…barelycold in the ground…
The weight pressed down so hard on Jaz’s chest that she wanted nothing more than to lie down on the ground and let it crush her.
‘You have the gall to say that after the number of weekends Frieda spent in Sydney with Jaz, living the high life? Jaz didn’t need to come home and you bloody well know it!’
Home.
Jaz started. She couldn’t lie down on the ground. Not out the front of her mother’s bookshop.
‘Now clear off, Dianne Keith. You’re nothing but a troublemaking busybody with a streak of spite in you a mile wide.’
With the loudest intake of breath Jaz had ever heard anyone huff, Dianne stormed off.
Didn’t come near your mother for years…barelycold in the ground…
A touch on her arm brought her back. The touch of work-roughened fingers on the bare flesh of her arm.
‘Are you okay?’
His voice was low, a cooling autumn breeze. Jaz inched away, out of reach of those work-roughened fingers, away from the heat of his body.
‘Yes, I’m fine.’
But, as the spearmint of her gum faded, all she could smell was the mountains in autumn. She remembered how it had once been her favourite smell in the world. When she’d been a girl…and gullible.
She would be fine. In just a moment. If she could stop breathing so deeply, his scent would fade.
She cleared her throat. ‘It’s not that I expected a fatted calf, but I didn’t expect that.’ She nodded to where Dianne had stood.
She hadn’t expected a welcome, but she hadn’t expected outright hostility either. Except, perhaps, from Connor Reed.
She’d have welcomed it from him.
‘Dianne Keith has been not-so-secretly in love with Gordon Sears for years now.’
She blinked. He was telling her this because… ‘Oh! I didn’t sell him the bookshop, so his nose is out of joint…making her nose out of joint too?’
‘You better believe it.’
She couldn’t believe she was standing in Clara Falls’ main street talking to Connor Reed like…like nothing had ever happened between them. As if this were a normal, everyday event.
She made the mistake then of glancing full into his face, of meeting his amazing brown eyes head-on.
They sparkled gold. And every exquisite moment she’d ever spent with him came crashing back.
If she could’ve stepped away she would’ve, but the bookshop window already pressed hard against her shoulder blades.
If she could’ve glanced away she would’ve, but her foolish eyes refused to obey the dictates of her brain. They feasted on his golden beauty as if starved for the sight of him. It made something inside her lift.
The sparks in his eyes flashed and burned. As if he couldn’t help it, his gaze lowered and travelled down the length of her body with excruciating slowness. When his gaze returned to hers, his eyes had darkened to a smoky, molten lava that she remembered too well.
Her pulse gave a funny little leap. Blood pounded in her ears. She had to grip her hands together. After all these years and everything that had passed between them, how could there be anything but bitterness?
Her heart burned acid. No way! She had no intention of travelling down that particular path to hell ever again.
Eight years ago she’d believed in him—in them—completely, but Connor had accused her of cheating on him. His lack of faith in her had broken her heart…destroyed her.
She hadn’t broken his heart, though, because nine months after Jaz had fled town he’d had a child with Faye. A daughter. A little girl.
She folded her arms. Belatedly, she realised, it made even more of her…assets. She couldn’t unfold them again without revealing to him that his continued assessment bothered her. She kept said arms stoically folded, but her heart twisted and turned and ached.
‘I don’t need you to fight my battles for me, Connor.’ She needed him to stay away.
‘I—’ he stressed the word ‘—always do what I consider is right. You needn’t think your coming back to town is going to change that.’
‘Do what’s right?’ She snorted. ‘Like jumping to conclusions? Do you still do that, Connor?’
The words shot out of her—a challenge—and she couldn’t believe she’d uttered them. The air suddenly grew so thick with their history she wondered how on earth either one of them could breathe through it.
She’d always known things between them could never be normal. Not after the intensity of what they’d shared. It was why she’d stayed away. It was why she needed him to stay away from her now.
‘Do what’s right?’ She snorted a second time. She’d keep up this front if it killed her. ‘Like that sign?’ She pointed to the shop awning. ‘What is that…your idea of a sick joke?’
That frown returned to his eyes again. ‘Look, Jaz, I—’
Richard chose that moment to come bustling up between them, his breathing loud and laboured. ‘Sorry, Jaz. I saw you cruising up the street, but I couldn’t get away immediately. I had a client with me.’
Connor clapped him on the back. ‘You need to exercise more, my man, if a sprint up the street makes you breathe this hard.’
Richard grinned. ‘It is uphill.’
His grin faded. He hitched his head in the direction of the bookshop. ‘Sorry, Jaz. It’s a bit of a farce, isn’t it?’
‘It’s not what I was expecting,’ she allowed.
Connor and Richard said nothing. She cleared her throat. ‘Where are my staff?’
Richard glanced at Connor as if for help. Connor shoved his hands in his pockets and glowered at the pavement.
‘Richard?’
‘That’s just the thing, you see, Jaz. The last of your staff resigned yesterday.’
Resigned? Her staff? So… ‘I have no staff?’ She stared at Richard. For some reason she turned to stare at Connor too.
Both men nodded.
‘But…’ She would not lie down on the ground and admit defeat. She wouldn’t. ‘Why?’
‘How about we go inside?’ Connor suggested with a glance over his shoulder.
That was when Jaz became aware of the faces pressed against the inside of the plate glass of Mr Sears’s ‘baked-fresh-daily’ country bakery, watching her avidly. In an act of pure bravado, she lifted her hand and sent the shop across the road a cheery wave. Then she turned and stalked through the door Richard had just unlocked.
Connor caught the door before it closed but he didn’t step inside. ‘I’ll get back to work.’
On that sign? ‘No, you won’t,’ she snapped out tartly. ‘I want to talk to you.’
Richard stared at her as if…as if…
She reached up to smooth her hair. ‘What?’
‘Gee, Jaz. You used to dress mean but you always talked sweet.’
‘Yeah, well…’ She shrugged. ‘I found out that I achieved a whole lot more if I did things the other way around.’
Nobody said anything for a moment. Richard rubbed the back of his neck. Connor stared morosely at some point in the middle distance.
‘Okay, tell me what happened to my staff.’
‘You could probably tell from the sales figures I sent you that the bookshop isn’t doing particularly well.’
He could say that again.
‘So, over the last few months, your mother let most of the staff go.’
‘Most,’ she pointed out, ‘not all.’
‘There was only Anita and Dianne left. Mr Sears poached Anita for the bakery…’
‘Which left Dianne.’ She swung back to Connor. ‘Not the same Dianne who…?’
‘The one and the same.’
Oh, that was just great. ‘She made her feelings… clear,’ she said to Richard.
Richard gave his watch an agonised glance.
‘You don’t have time for this at the moment, do you?’ she said.
‘I’m sorry, but I have appointments booked for the next couple of hours and—’
‘Then go before you’re late.’ She shooed him to the door. ‘I’ll be fine.’ She would be.
‘I’ll be back later,’ he promised.
Then he left. Which left her and Connor alone in the dim space of the bookshop.
‘So…’ Connor said, breaking the silence that had wrapped around them. His voice wasn’t so much a cooling autumn breeze as a winter chill. ‘You’re still not interested in selling the bookshop to Mr Sears?’
Sell? Not in this lifetime.
‘I’m not selling the bookshop. At least not yet.’
Connor rested his hands on his hips and continued to survey her. She couldn’t read his face or his body language, but she wished he didn’t look so darn…male!
‘So you’re staying here in Clara Falls, then?’
‘No.’ She poured as much incredulity and disdain into her voice as she could. ‘Not long-term. I have a life in the city. This is just a…’
‘Just a…’ he prompted when she faltered.
‘A momentary glitch,’ she snapped. ‘I’ll get the bookshop back on its feet and running at a profit— which I figure will take twelve months tops—and then I mean to return to my real life.’
‘I see.’
Perhaps he did. But she doubted it.
CHAPTER TWO
CONNOR met the steeliness in Jaz’s eyes and wished he could just turn around and walk away. His overriding instinct was to reach out and offer her comfort. Despite that veneer of toughness she’d cultivated, he knew this return couldn’t be easy for her.
Her mother had committed suicide only four weeks ago!
That had to be eating her up alive.
She didn’t look as if she’d welcome his comfort. She kept eyeing him as if he were something slimy and wet that had just oozed from the drain.
The muscles in his neck, his jaw, bunched. What was her problem? She’d been the one to lay waste to all his plans, all his dreams, eight years ago. Not the other way around. She could at least have the grace to…
To what? an inner voice mocked. Spare you a smile? Get over yourself, Reed. You don’t want her smiles.
But, as he gazed down into her face, noted the fragile luminosity of her skin, the long dark lashes framing her eyes and the sweet peach lipstick staining her lips, something primitive fired his blood. He wanted to haul her into his arms, slant his mouth over hers and taste her, brand himself on her senses.
Every cell in his body tightened and burned at the thought. The intensity of it took him off guard. Had his heart thudding against his ribcage. After eight years…
After eight years he hadn’t expected to feel anything. He sure as hell hadn’t expected this.
He rolled his shoulders and tried to banish the images from his mind. Every stupid mistake he’d made with his life had happened in the weeks after Jaz had left town. He couldn’t blame her for the way he’d reacted to her betrayal—that would be childish—but he would never give her that kind of power over him again.
Never.
She stuck out her chin, hands on hips—combative, aggressive and so unlike the Jaz of old it took him off guard. ‘Why did you change the sign? Who gave you permission?’
She moved behind the sales counter, stowed her handbag beneath it, then turned back and raised an eyebrow. ‘Well?’ She tapped her foot.
Her boot—a pretty little feminine number in brown suede and as unlike her old black Doc Martens as anything could be—echoed smartly against the bare floorboards. Or maybe that was due to the silence that had descended around them again. He hooked his thumbs through the belt loops of his jeans and told himself to stay on task. It was just…that lipstick.
