Abby and the Bachelor Cop / Misty and the Single Dad: Abby and the Bachelor Copy / Misty and the Single Dad

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‘Sorry.’ Raff’s mischief turned to a chuckle, deep and toe-curlingly sexy. ‘And sorry about the intrusion, but Sarah wrapped your gift and decided she needed to deliver it immediately.’

‘So can we come in while you open it?’ Sarah was halfway in, scooping up a joyful Kleppy on the way. But then she faltered. ‘Do you still have a headache?’ Sarah knew all about headaches—Abby could see her cringe at the thought.

‘Abby said she had a headache,’ Raff said. ‘That’s past tense, Sares. I reckon it was cured the minute Philip went to dinner without her.’

‘Will you cut it out?’

‘Do you still have a headache?’ he asked, not perturbed at all by her snap.

‘No, but.’

‘There you go. Sares, what if I leave you here for half an hour so you can watch the present-opening and play with Kleppy? I’ll pick you up at eight. Is that okay with you, Abby?’

It wasn’t okay with Sarah.

‘No,’ she ordered. ‘You have to watch her open it. It was your idea. You’ll really like it, Abby. Ooh, and I want to help you use it.’

So they both came in. Abby was absurdly aware that she had a police car parked in her driveway. That’d be reported to Philip in about two minutes, she thought. And to her parents. And to everyone else in this claustrophobic little town.

What was wrong with her? She loved this town and she was old enough to ignore gossip. Raff was here helping Sarah deliver a wedding gift. What was wrong with that?

Ten minutes tops and she’d have him out of here.

But the gift took ten minutes to open. Sarah had wrapped it herself. She’d used about twenty layers of paper and about four rolls of tape.

‘I should use you to design my police cells,’ Raff said, grinning, as Abby ploughed her way through layer after layer after layer. ‘This sucker’s not getting out any time soon.’

‘It’s exciting,’ Sarah said, wide-eyed with anticipation. ‘I wonder what it is?’

Uh-oh. Abby glanced up at Raff at that and saw a shaft of pain. Short-term memory. Sarah would have spent an hour happily wrapping this gift, but an hour was a long time. For her to remember what she’d actually wrapped.

There was no way Raff could leave this town, she conceded. Sarah operated on long-term memory, the things she’d had instilled as a child. A new environment … a new home, new city, new friends … Sarah would be lost.

Raff was as trapped here as she was.

But she wasn’t trapped, she told herself sharply, scaring herself with the direction her thoughts were headed. She loved it here. She loved Philip.

She was almost at the end. One last snip and …

Ooooh …

She couldn’t stop the sigh of pure pleasure.

This was no small gift. It was a thing she’d loved for ever.

It was Gran Finn’s pasta maker.

Colleen Finn had been as Irish as her name suggested. She was one of thirteen children and she’d married a hard drinking bull of a man who’d come to Australia to make a new start with no intention of changing his ways.

As a young bride, Gran had simply got on with it. And she’d cooked. Every recipe she could get her hands on, Irish or otherwise.

Abby was about ten when the pasta maker had come into the house. Bright and shiny and a complete puzzle to them all.

‘Greta Riccardo’s having a yard sale, getting rid of all her mother’s stuff.’ Gran was puffed up like a peahen in her indignation. ‘All Maria’s recipes—books and books—and here’s Greta saying she never liked Italian food. That’s like me saying I don’t like potatoes. How could I let the pasta maker go to someone who doesn’t love it? In honour of my friend Maria, we’ll learn to be Italian.’

It was in the middle of the school holidays and the kids, en masse, were enchanted. They’d watched and helped, and within weeks they’d been making decent pasta. Abby remembered holding sheets of dough, stretching it out, competing to see who could make the longest spaghetti.

Pasta thus became a staple in the Finn house and it was only as she grew older she realised how cheap it must have been. With her own eggs and her home grown tomatoes, Gran had a new basic food. But now …

‘Don’t you use this any more?’ she ventured, stunned they could give away this part of themselves, and Raff smiled, though his smile was a little wary.

And, with the wariness, Abby got it.

She remembered Sarah as a teenager, stretching dough, kneading it, easing it through the machine with care so it wouldn’t rip, making angels’ hair, every kind of the most delicate pasta varieties.

She thought of Sarah now, with fumbling fingers, knowing what she’d been able to do, knowing what she’d lost.

‘We don’t use it any more,’ Sarah said. ‘But we don’t want to throw it away. So Raff said why don’t we give it to you and I can come round and remind you how to do it.’

‘Will you and I make some now?’ she asked Sarah before she could stop herself. ‘Can you remember how to make it?’

‘I think so,’ Sarah said and looked doubtfully at her big brother. ‘Can I, Raff?’

‘Maybe we could both give Abby a reminder lesson,’ Raff said. ‘As part of our wedding present. If your headache’s indeed better, Abigail?’

Both? Whoa. No. Uh-uh.

This was really dumb.

The police car would be parked outside for a couple of hours.

‘You want me to drive the car round the back?’ he asked.

She stared at him and he gazed straight back. Impassive. Reading her mind?

This was up to her. All she had to do was say her headache had come back.

They were all looking at her. Sarah. Kleppy.

Raff.

Go away. You’re complicating my life. My wedding dress is right behind that door. My fiancé is just over the far side of town.

Sarah’s eyes were wide with hope.

‘I guess it’ll still get around that my car was round the back for a couple of hours,’ Raff said, watching the warring emotions on her face. ‘Will Dexter call me out at dawn?’

‘Philip,’ she said automatically.

‘Philip,’ he agreed. Neutral.

‘He won’t mind,’ she said.

‘I’d mind if I was Philip.’

‘Just lucky you’re not Philip,’ she said and she’d meant to sound snarky but she didn’t quite manage it. ‘Why don’t you go do what you need to do and come back in a couple of hours?’

‘But Raff likes making pasta, too,’ Sarah said and Abby looked at his face and saw … and saw that he did.

There was a lot of this man to back away from. There was a lot about this man to distrust. But watching him now. It was as if he was hungry, she thought. He was disguising it, with his smart tongue and his teasing and his blatant provocation, but still.

He’d just given away his grandmother’s pasta maker. He’d given it to her.

She’d love it. She’d use it for ever. The memories. She and Sarah, Raff and Ben, messing round in Gran’s kitchen.

If it wasn’t for this man, Ben would still be here.

How long did hate last?

For the last ten years, every time she’d looked at Raff Finn she’d felt ill. Now. She looked at Sarah and at the pasta maker. She thought of Mrs Fryer’s vitriol. She thought that Ben had been Raff’s best friend. Ben had loved him.

She’d loved him.

She couldn’t keep hating. She just … couldn’t.

She felt sick and weary and desperately sad. She felt. wasted.

‘Hey, Abby really isn’t well,’ Raff said and maybe he’d read the emotions—maybe it was easy because she was having no luck disguising them from herself, much less from him. ‘Maybe we should go, Sares, and let her recover.’

‘Do you really have a headache?’ Sarah put her hand on her arm, all concern. ‘Does it bang behind your eyes? It’s really bad when it does that.’

Did Sarah still have headaches? Did Raff cope with them, take care of her, ache for his little sister and all she’d lost?

Maybe she should have invited Raff to her wedding.

Now there was a stupid thing to think. She might be coming out the other side of a decade of bitterness but her parents. they never would. They knew that Raff had killed their son, pure and simple.

Philip would never countenance him at their wedding. Her parents would always hate him.

Any bridges must be her own personal bridges, built of an understanding that she couldn’t keep stoking this flame of bitterness for the rest of her life.

They were watching her. Sarah’s hand was still on her arm. Concerned for her headache. Sarah, whose headaches had taken away so much …

‘Not a headache,’ she whispered and then more strongly, ‘it’s not a headache. It’s just … I’m overwhelmed. I loved making pasta with you guys when I was a kid. I can’t believe you’re giving this to me. It’s the most wonderful gift—a truly generous gift of the heart. It’s made me feel all choked up.’

And then, as Sarah was still looking unsure, she took her hands and tugged her close and kissed her. ‘Thank you,’ she whispered.