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‘Why?’ What the hell… ‘Because it was dangerous, that’s why.’
‘Not that.’ She waved an imperious hand in the air. ‘Why is it your company that is doing the work?’
Because Richard had asked him to.
Because he’d wanted to prove that the past had no hold over him any more.
She folded her arms. ‘I should imagine the last thing you wanted was to clap eyes on me again.’
She was right about that.
She stuck out a defiant hip. ‘In fact, I’d guess that the last thing you want is me living in Clara Falls again.’
It took a moment for the import of her words to hit him. When they did, he clenched a fist so tight it started to shake. She glanced at his fist, then back into his face. She cocked an eyebrow. She didn’t unsay her words.
‘Are you insinuating that I’d use my position as a builder to sabotage your shop?’ He tried to remember the last time he’d wanted to throttle someone.
‘Would you? Have you? I mean… There’s that travesty of a sign, for a start. Now the delay. What would you think? You and Gordon Sears could be like that—’ she waved two crossed fingers under his nose ‘—for all I know.’
‘God, Jaz! I know it’s been eight years, but can you seriously think I would stoop to that?’
She raked him from the top of his head to his boot laces with her hot gaze—blue on the way down, green when she met his eyes again on the way up— and it felt as if she actually placed her hands on his body and stroked him. His heart started to thump. She moistened her lips. It wasn’t a nervous gesture, more…an assessing one. But it left a shine on her lips that had him clenching back a groan.
‘Business is business,’ he ground out. ‘I don’t have to like who I’m working for.’
Was it his imagination or did she pale at his words?
Her chin didn’t drop. ‘So you’re saying this is just another job to you?’
He hesitated a moment too long.
Jaz snorted and pushed past him, charged back down to the sales counter and stood squarely behind it, as if she wanted to place herself out of his reach. ‘Thank you for the work you’ve done so far, Connor, but your services are no longer required.’
He stalked down to the counter, reached across and gripped her chin in his fingers, forced her gaze to his. ‘Fine! You want the truth? This isn’t just another job. What happened to your mother… It made me sick to my stomach. We…someone in town…we should’ve paid more attention, we should’ve sensed that—’
He released her and swung away. She smelt like a wattle tree in full bloom—sweet and elusive. It was too much.
When he glanced back at her, her eyes had filled with tears. She touched her fingers to her jaw where he’d held her. Bile rose up through him. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—’ He gestured futilely with his hand. ‘Did I hurt you?’
‘No.’
She shook her head, her voice low, and he watched her push the tears down with the sheer force of her will…way down deep inside her like she used to do. Suddenly he felt older than his twenty-six years. He felt a hundred.
‘I’m sorry I doubted your integrity.’
She issued her apology with characteristic sincerity and speed. He dragged a hand down his face. The Jaz of old might’ve been incapable of fidelity, but she’d been equally incapable of malice.
If she’d asked him to forgive her eight years ago, he would have. In an instant.
He shoved his hands in his pockets. ‘Am I rehired?’
She straightened, moistened her lips and nodded. He didn’t know how he could tell, but this time the gesture was nervous.
‘You won’t find it hard coping with my presence around the place for the next fortnight?’ Some devil prompted him to ask.
‘Of course not!’
He could tell that she was lying.
‘We’re both adults, aren’t we? What’s in the past is in the past.’
He wanted to agree. He opened his mouth to do precisely that, but the words refused to come.
Jaz glanced at him, moistened her lips again. ‘It’s going to take a fortnight? So long?’
‘Give or take a couple of days. And that’s working as fast as I can.’
‘I see.’
He shoved his hands deeper into his pockets. ‘I’ll get back to work on that sign then, shall I?’
The door clanged shut behind Connor with a finality that made Jaz want to burst into tears.
Crazy. Ridiculous.
Her knees shook so badly she thought she might fall. Very carefully, she lowered herself to the stool behind the counter. Being found slumped on the floor was not the look she was aiming for, not on her first day.
Not on any day.
She closed her eyes, dragged in a deep breath and tried to slow her pulse, quieten the blood pounding in her ears. She could do this. She could do this. She’d known her first meeting with Connor would be hard. She hadn’t expected to deal with him on her first day though.
Hard? Ha! Try gruelling. Exhausting. Fraught.
She hadn’t known she would still feel his pain as if it were her own. She hadn’t known her body would remember…everything. Or that it would sing and thrum just because he was near.
She hadn’t known she’d yearn for it all again— their love, the rightness of being with him.
Connor had shown her the magic of love, but he’d shown her the other side of love too—the blackness, the ugliness…the despair. It had turned her into another kind of person—an angry, destructive person. It had taken her a long time to conquer that darkness. She would never allow herself to become that person again. Never. And the only way she could guarantee that was by keeping Connor at arm’s length. Further, if possible.
But it didn’t stop her watching him through the shop window as he worked on her sign.
She opened the shop, she served customers, but that didn’t stop her noticing how efficiently he worked either, the complete lack of fuss that accompanied his every movement. It reminded her of how he used to draw, of the times they’d take their charcoals and sketch pads to one of the lookouts.
She’d sit on a rock hunched over her pad, intent on capturing every single detail of the view spread out before her, concentrating fiercely on all she saw. Connor would lean back against a tree, his sketch pad propped against one knee, charcoal lightly clasped, eyes half-closed, and his fingers would play across the page with seemingly no effort at all.
Their high school art teacher had given them identical marks, but Jaz had known from the very first that Connor had more talent in his little finger than she possessed in her whole body. She merely drew what was there, copied what was in front of her eyes. Connor’s drawings had captured something deeper, something truer. They’d captured an essence, the hidden potential of the thing. Connor had drawn the optimistic future.
His hair glittered gold in the sun as he stepped down the ladder to retrieve something from his van.
And what was he doing now? Painting shop signs? His work should hang in galleries!
He turned and his gaze met hers. Just like that. With no fuss. No hesitation. She didn’t step back into the shadows of the shop or drop her gaze and pretend she hadn’t been watching. He would know. He pointed to the sign, then sent her a thumbs up.
All that potential wasted.
Jaz couldn’t lift her arm in an answering wave. She couldn’t even twitch the corners of her mouth upwards in acknowledgement of his silent communication. She had to turn away.
When she’d challenged him—thrown out there in the silences that throbbed between them that she must be the last person he’d ever want to see, he hadn’t denied it.
Her stomach burned acid. Coming back to Clara Falls, she’d expected to experience loss and grief. But for her mother. Not Connor. She’d spent the last eight years doing all she could to get over him. These feelings should not be resurfacing now.
If you’d got over him you’d have come home likeyour mother begged you to.
The accusation rang through her mind. Her hands shook. She hugged herself tightly. She’d refused to come home, still too full of pride and anger and bitterness. It had distorted everything. It had closed her mind to her mother’s despair.
If she’d come home…but she hadn’t.
For the second time that day, she ground back the tears. She didn’t deserve the relief they would bring. She would make a success of the bookshop. She would make this final dream of her mother’s a reality. She would leave a lasting memorial of Frieda Harper in Clara Falls. Once she’d done that, perhaps she might find a little peace… Perhaps she’d have earned it.
She glanced back out of the window. Connor hadn’t left yet. He stood in a shaft of sunlight, haloed in gold, leaning against his van, talking to Richard. For one glorious moment the years fell away. How many times had she seen Connor and Richard talking like that—at school, on the cricket field, while they’d waited for her outside this very bookshop? Things should’ve been different. Things should’ve been very different.
He’d given up his art. It was too high a price to pay. Grief for the boy he’d once been welled up inside her.
It would take her a long, long time to find peace.
She hadn’t cheated on him with Sam Hancock. She hadn’t cheated on him with anyone, but Connor no longer deserved her bitterness. He had a little daughter now, responsibilities. He’d paid for his mistakes, just like she’d paid for hers. If what her mother had told her was true, Faye had left Connor literally holding the baby six years ago. Jaz would not make his life more difficult.
Something inside her lifted. It eased the tightness in her chest and allowed her to breathe more freely for a moment.
Connor turned and his eyes met hers through the plate glass of the shop window. The weight crashed back down on her with renewed force. She gripped the edges of the stool to keep herself upright. Connor might not deserve her bitterness, but she still had to find a way of making him keep his distance, because something in him still sang to something in her—a siren song that had the power to destroy her all over again if she let it.
Richard turned then too, saw her and waved. She lifted a numb arm in response. He said something to Connor and both men frowned. As one, they pushed away from Connor’s van and headed for the bookshop door.
A shiver rippled through her. She shot to her feet. She had to deal with more Connor on her first day? Heaven, give her strength.
The moment he walked through the door all strength seeped from her limbs, leaving them boneless, useless, and plonking her back down on the stool.
‘Hello, again,’ Richard said.
‘Hi.’ From somewhere she found a smile.
She glanced sideways at Connor. He pursed his lips and frowned at the ornate pressed-tin work on the ceiling. She found her gaze drawn upwards, searching for signs of damp and peeling paint, searching for what made him frown. She didn’t find anything. It all looked fine to her.
Richard cleared his throat and she turned her attention back to him with an apologetic shrug.
‘These are the keys for the shop.’ He placed a set of keys onto the counter in front of her. ‘And this is the key to the flat upstairs.’ He held it up for her to see, but he didn’t place it on the counter with the other keys.
Connor reached over and plucked the key from Richard’s fingers. ‘What did my receptionist tell you about the upstairs flat?’
Her stomach started to churn. ‘That you’d given it a final coat of paint last week and that it was ready to move into.’
Connor and Richard exchanged glances.
‘Um…but then you’re a builder, not a painter, right?’
He’d painted the sign for the shop, so maybe…
She shook her head. ‘Painting the flat isn’t your department, is it?’
‘No, but I can organise that for you, if you want.’
‘You didn’t think to check with me?’ Richard asked.
The thought hadn’t occurred to her. Though, in hindsight… ‘She said she was contacting me on your behalf. I didn’t think to question that. When she asked me if there was anything else I needed done, I mentioned the sign.’ She’d wanted it bright and sparkling. She wanted her mother’s name loud and proud above the shop.
‘I’m sorry, Jaz,’ Connor started heavily, ‘but—’
‘But I’ve been given the wrong information,’ she finished for him. Again. From the expression on his face, though, she wouldn’t want to be his receptionist when he finally made it back to the office. Shame pierced her. She should’ve known better than to lump Connor with the meaner elements in the town.
She swallowed. ‘That’s okay, I can take care of the painting myself.’ She wanted to drop her head onto her folded arms and rest for a moment. ‘What kind of state is the flat in?’
‘We only started tearing out the kitchen cupboards and the rotting floorboards yesterday. It’s a mess.’
Once upon a time he’d have couched that more tactfully, but she appreciated his candour now. ‘Habitable?’
He grimaced.
‘Okay then…’ She thought hard for a moment. ‘All my stuff is arriving tomorrow.’
‘What stuff?’ Connor asked.
‘Everything. Necessary white goods, for a start— refrigerator, washing machine, microwave. Then there’s the furniture—dining table, bed, bookcase. Not to mention the—’
‘You brought a bookcase?’ Connor glanced around the shop. ‘When you have all these?’
For a brief moment his eyes sparkled. Her breathing went all silly. ‘I’ll need a bookcase in the flat too.’
‘Why?’
The teasing glint in his eyes chased her weariness away. ‘For the books that happen to be arriving tomorrow too.’
Connor and Richard groaned in unison. ‘Has your book addiction lessened as the years have gone by?’ Richard demanded.
They used to tease her about this eight years ago. It made her feel younger for a moment, freer. ‘Oh, no.’ She rubbed her hands together with relish. ‘If anything, it’s grown.’
The two men groaned again and she laughed. She’d actually laughed on her first day back in Clara Falls? Perhaps miracles could happen.
She glanced at Connor and pulled herself up. Not those kinds of miracles.
