‘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…barely cold 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