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He said, ‘Some time in the future, you’ll be able to tell Bella all about this place.’
Some time in the future…
She thought about going back to Melbourne and resuming her old life…
Before she’d left the city, she’d wanted nothing more than to hurry back there as soon as this mission was accomplished. But from the moment she’d first set eyes on Seth in Tamundra, she’d been foolishly losing her sense of direction.
Even if they hadn’t shared that sensational kiss last night, she’d still be in danger of swooning whenever he was near. Every moment she spent with him she was falling a little more deeply under his spell.
Newsflash, Amy. The enchantment is one sided.
Seth’s kiss might have bowled her over, but it was a mere blip on his radar. He’d shown no interest in an encore.
It was time to be sensible. She had to stick to the original plan, which meant finding out as much as she could about Bella’s father, then heading straight for home.
‘There’s something down here that I should show you while we’re talking,’ Seth said, and he began to descend the stone steps.
Amy kept pace beside him. ‘Can you tell me more about your uncle and Rachel?’
His hesitation was momentary. ‘I can tell you that he loved her. I didn’t realise it straight away, but he was head over heels.’
Amy nodded, recognising the familiar story. Guys were often falling head over heels for Rachel—except that this time, Rachel hadn’t remained immune.
‘Apparently, this was the first time my uncle had been so deeply in love since he met my mother,’ Seth said.
They’d reached the bottom of the steps and she saw a track winding through the untamed scrub. Seth slowed his pace.
‘I think Rachel felt the same way,’ Amy told him. ‘For ages, she wouldn’t talk about her baby’s father, and that was highly unusual for her. Finally she admitted that she loved him, but she didn’t think she could live here. Do you think your uncle tried to persuade her to stay?’
‘I’m sure he must have. He certainly didn’t want her to leave.’
‘But he didn’t try to come after her either.’
Seth stopped walking. His mouth was a pensive downward curve and he stood with his thumbs hooked through the belt loops of his jeans, not quite meeting Amy’s gaze. ‘I know he was worried that he couldn’t make the relationship work, but he still wanted to jump on a plane and fly down to Rachel.’
His mouth twisted unhappily. ‘I’m afraid I persuaded him that he shouldn’t try to follow her.’
‘Why?’
Her abrupt question seemed to anger him. ‘Seth was a fifty-year-old man chasing after a girl almost half his age.’
‘Stranger things have happened in the name of love.’
‘Love?’ He sent her a sharp glance.
‘Why are you looking at me like that?’
‘I don’t want to bad-mouth your friend…’
He left the sentence dangling and now it was Amy who was angry. ‘What?’ she demanded. ‘What are you not telling me?’
‘I—I wasn’t convinced that Rachel really cared for my uncle.’ He looked away, eyes squinted against the bright morning sun. ‘She was a flirt. A girl on the lookout for a holiday fling.’
Telltale wariness flickered in his eyes.
Amy gasped. ‘Don’t tell me she flirted with you, too?’
Seth sighed heavily.
‘Seth?’
‘She made it pretty obvious she was interested.’
Oh.
It was pathetic, but Amy couldn’t hold back her next question. ‘But you didn’t sleep with her, did you?’
‘I told you, no.’
With a pained grimace he kicked at a stone and sent it tumbling down the track. ‘Rachel arrived here full of flirtatious smiles and ready for fun, but I must admit she changed her tune after she met my uncle. But I still didn’t recognise how deeply he was involved. I kept trying to downplay the romance. We went through this weird kind of role reversal, where he was the reckless, love struck kid and I was the cautioning adult.’
Cords of tension stood out on Seth’s neck, and when he shoved tightly fisted hands into his jeans’ pockets, knotted veins showed in his forearms.
‘Seth, I didn’t mean to pry. You don’t have to—’
He kept talking as if he hadn’t heard her. ‘He came to me one morning in the middle of the wet season. We’d had really heavy rain and the roads were cut and he demanded that I fly him to Cairns. Come hell or high water, he was going to Melbourne. He still hadn’t heard from Rachel—no phone calls, letters, or emails.’
Seth gave a despairing shake of his head. ‘I told him he was a hot-headed fool, that he hadn’t thought everything through. I said he should wait till the wet season was over. If he still felt the same way about her then, he should go.’
Again, Seth looked unhappily out to the distant green islands. ‘I forgot how stubborn and independent he could be, and there’s no fool like an old fool. He took off alone in the flaming tinny to go to Cairns by sea—’
‘What’s a tinny?’
‘An aluminium dinghy. We used it for fishing around the islands, but my uncle was planning to take it all the way to Cairns.’ Seth’s throat worked. ‘A damn storm came up out of nowhere.’
Amy stared at him in dawning horror, guessing what would come next.
Grim-faced, Seth told her. ‘A fishing trawler found the wreck three days later.’
The news rocked Amy. She’d never dreamed…
‘I’m sure Rachel didn’t know,’ she whispered.
Appalled, she recognised Seth’s grief, and felt his pain. It was there in the way he held himself stiffly, so stiffly, and his hurting was a live thing, reaching out to her and squeezing her heart.
‘I blame myself,’ Seth said softly. ‘My uncle asked me to do one simple thing for him and I turned him down. After everything he’d done for me.’
Again, he kicked at a stone and, with a gruff, anguished growl, he began to stride away from Amy. She hurried down the track to catch up.
‘You mustn’t blame yourself,’ she said.
He whirled around. ‘Why not? I should have seen how desperate he was. If I’d had any idea he’d take that bloody boat, I’d have flown him to Cairns in a heartbeat.’
Tears stung her eyes.
‘I didn’t know Rachel was pregnant.’ His voice was rough and choked. ‘I didn’t know how to contact her after he died, but if I’d known she was pregnant, I would have made a bigger effort to find her.’
Blinking tears, Amy reached out and touched him on the arm.
He tensed as if she’d burned him.
‘I do know how you feel, Seth.’
His eyes blazed with sudden anger. ‘How could you possibly know?’
‘I’ve been there. In that same place.’
She knew he didn’t believe her, or care. His jaw hardened and a merciless light crept into his eyes. ‘OK, so how do I feel?’
Amy’s throat was tight, and it felt raw and fiery when she tried to swallow. ‘You’d give anything to have that time over again, to make different choices.’
Seth continued to glare at her.
‘Believe me, Seth, I know exactly what it feels like to be full of remorse, to feel responsible for what’s happened. I’ve suffered all kinds of guilt over Rachel.’
In silence, he absorbed this news, and at last Amy saw his shoulders relax. He shook his head. ‘But you weren’t to blame for Rachel’s accident.’
‘I was,’ she said, blinking back tears. ‘I should have invited my boyfriend to a corporate launch, but I asked Rachel to come instead. If I hadn’t invited her, if I‘d asked Dominic and left Rachel safely at home with Bella, she’d still be alive.’
‘But her accident was just bad luck. You told me that when you rang. Some fool ran a red light.’
Amy’s stomach lurched unhappily and she couldn’t look at him. She hated making this admission, but it had been eating at her for the past two months.
‘I can’t stop feeling guilty about that night because…because I wanted to show off to her. If I’m brutally honest, that was the real, the only reason I invited Rachel.’
Still she couldn’t look at him, and she forced her eyes extra wide to hold her tears at bay. ‘Rachel was always so amazingly clever and I finally had the chance to show her how good I was at my job. The launch party was going to be fabulous and I wanted her to see me in my finest hour. I—I can’t believe I was so full of myself.’
She pressed her lips together tightly to hold back a sob.
‘You’re looking at this the wrong way,’ Seth said, lifting his voice above the sudden noise of squabbling parrots in nearby trees. ‘There’s nothing wrong with inviting a best friend to a party.’
‘But my motives were selfish.’
‘So you wanted to show off? That’s not exactly a crime, Amy. Half the parties in the world are about showing off.’
He snagged a stem of long grass and she found herself watching the deft movements of his fingers as he wove the strip of green into a narrow plait. A sigh escaped her.
‘Perhaps we’re both being too hard on ourselves,’ he said quietly.
Was he right? She felt a tenuous but amazingly deep connection to him in this moment. Here were the two of them—grieving and alone, lost and guilty—two strangers from different worlds linked by one tiny girl.
‘I know one thing,’ she said, at last. ‘No matter how badly we want to, we can’t change what’s happened.’
Seth nodded. ‘All we can do is look for a way to move forward again.’
His eyes regarded her warmly. ‘Speaking of moving on, I still haven’t shown you why I brought you down here.’
‘Do we have time? Shouldn’t we get back to Bella?’
‘This will only take a moment.’
Ahead of them, the track narrowed and Seth led the way, holding back giant fern fronds so they didn’t brush against Amy. She heard the sound of running water and when they rounded the next bend, the track opened up to reveal a picture-perfect, fern-fringed rock pool fed by a cascading waterfall.
‘Oh, wow!’
‘It’s an alternative swimming hole,’ Seth said with a grin. ‘Better than the beach because it’s too high up for crocodiles.’
‘It’s beautiful.’ It was truly beautiful. Even so, at the mention of crocodiles, Amy sent a cautious glance over the tumble of rocks and she quickly scanned the massive overhanging tree branches. ‘Do snakes come here?’
‘Not often.’
She edged closer to Seth. ‘How often is not often?’
He grinned. ‘I’ve seen the occasional harmless python sunning itself on a rock, but that’s all.’
‘But it wouldn’t be safe to bring Bella here?’
‘Why not? She’d be fine—as long as she was with a responsible adult. I wouldn’t have brought you here if I thought it was dangerous.’
Amy turned from the pool to face him. ‘You do understand how important Bella is to me, don’t you? Rachel was my best friend and now you know how I feel about the accident—’
‘You want to make amends by taking wonderful care of her daughter.’
‘That’s it exactly.’ It was a relief to know that he finally understood. ‘Bella’s my responsibility now. I’m her legal guardian and I love her and I’m committed to watching out for her for the rest of my life.’
Seth nodded. ‘It’s a big thing to take on. Bella’s very lucky to have you.’ He looked down at the grass he’d been plaiting and tossed it away. ‘I’d like to help, if I can. I know I can’t offer much more than financial support. I have to stay here and run this place, but Bella’s my family, and she’s important to me, too.’
Without warning, he sent Amy a smouldering, half-lidded smile that awoke all kinds of unhelpful memories of last night’s kiss.
I’m an idiot, she thought.
What was the point of thinking about another kiss when Seth was busily discussing their separate futures?
His thoughts were centred on practicalities, not kisses, and from the start she’d insisted that her future lay in Melbourne with Bella. She’d made it very clear that she wanted to live miles and miles and miles away from here.
Her plans hadn’t changed. She couldn’t throw them away on the basis of one kiss.
OK, so maybe Seth’s kiss had eclipsed all other kisses in Amy’s experience, and maybe she was thinking far too much about the chances of a replay, and maybe now that she knew Seth hadn’t slept with Rachel, she couldn’t think of any reason to say no…
