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‘Only my pride was hurt,’ she said now to Ben. ‘Things between us weren’t right for a long time. I wasn’t happy, and he obviously wasn’t either. It had to end somehow....’ She took a deep breath. ‘And here I am, making a fresh start.’ She nodded decisively. ‘Now, that’s enough about me. Tell me more about your aunt Ida.’
‘Sure,’ he said, glad for the change in subject. ‘Ida got married to her wayfaring sailor on some exotic island somewhere and sailed around the world with him on his yacht until he died. Then she came back here and started the bookshop—first at the other end of town and now in the row of new shops I built.’
‘So you’re her landlord?’
‘The other guy was ripping her off on her rent.’
And Ben always looked after his own.
Sandy remembered how fiercely protective he’d been of his family. How stubbornly loyal. He would have been just as protective of his wife and son.
No wonder he had gone away when he’d lost them. What had brought him back to Dolphin Bay, with its tragic memories?
He turned to face her, his face composed, no hint from his expression that he might have been about to kiss her just minutes ago.
‘It was good of you to play along with me to make her happy. I just had to get her into that ambulance and on her way. Thank you.’
She shrugged. ‘No problem. I’d like someone to do the same for my grandmother.’
He glanced down at his watch. ‘Now you’d better go have your lunch before they close down the kitchen. Sorry I can’t join you, but—’
‘But what?’ Sandy tilted her head to one side. She put up her hand in a halt sign. ‘Am I missing something here? Aren’t you meant to be showing me the bookshop?’
Ben swivelled back to face her. He frowned. ‘Why would you want to see the bookshop?’
‘Because I’ve volunteered to look after it for your aunt until you find someone else. I promised. Remember? Crossed my heart and—’
He cut across her words. ‘But that wasn’t serious. That was just you playing along with me so she’d go to the hospital. Just a tactic...’
Vehemently, she shook her head. ‘A tactic? No it wasn’t. I meant it, Ben. I said I’d help out for a few days and I keep my word.’
‘But don’t you have an interview in Melbourne?’
‘Not until next Friday, and today’s only Saturday. I was planning on meandering slowly down the coast...’
She thought regretfully of the health spa she’d hoped to check in to for a few days of much needed pampering. Then she thought of the concern in Ida’s eyes.
‘But it’s okay. I’m happy to play bookshop for a while. Really.’
‘There’s no need to stay, Sandy. It won’t be a problem to close the shop for a few days until I find a temporary manager.’
‘That’s not what your aunt thinks,’ she said. ‘Besides, it might be useful for my interview to say I’ve been managing a shop.’ She did the quote thing again with her fingers. ‘“Recent retail experience”—yes, that would look good on my résumé.’ An update on her university holiday jobs working in department stores.
Ben was so tight-lipped he was bordering on grim. ‘Sandy, it’s nice of you, but forget it. I’ll find someone. There are agencies for emergency staff.’
Why was he so reluctant to accept such an easy solution to his aunt’s dilemma? Especially when he’d been the one to suggest it?
It wasn’t fair to blame her for not being aware of his ‘tactic’. And she wasn’t—repeat wasn’t—going to let his lack of enthusiasm at the prospect of her working in the bookshop daunt her.
Slowly, she shook her head from side to side. ‘Ben, I gave my word to your great-aunt and I intend to keep it.’
She looked to the doorway of Bay Books. Forced her voice to sound steady. ‘C’mon, show me around. I’m dying to see inside.’
Ben hesitated. He took a step forward and then stopped. His face reminded her of those storm clouds that had banked up on the horizon.
Sandy sighed out loud. She made her voice mock scolding. ‘Ben, I wouldn’t like to be in your shoes if you have to tell your aunt I skipped out on her.’
His jaw clenched. He looked at her without speaking for a long second. ‘Is that blackmail, Sandy?’
She couldn’t help a smile. ‘Not really. But, like I said, if I make a promise I keep it.’
‘Do you?’ he asked hoarsely.
The smile froze on her face.
Ben stood, his hands clenched by his sides. Was he remembering those passionately sworn promises to keep their love alive even though she was going back to Sydney at the end of her holiday?
Promises she hadn’t kept because she’d never heard from him? And she’d been too young, too scared, to take the initiative herself.
She’d been wrong not to persist in trying to keep in touch with him. Wrong not to have trusted him. Now she could see that. Twelve years too late she could see that.
‘Yes,’ she said abruptly and—unable to face him—turned on her heel. ‘C’mon, I need to check out the displays and you need to show me how to work the register and what to do about special orders and all that kind of stuff.’
She knew she was chattering too quickly, but she had to cover the sudden awkwardness between them.
She braced herself and looked back over her shoulder. Was he just going to stay standing on the footpath, looking so forbidding?
No. With an exhaled sigh that she hoped was more exasperated than angry, he followed her through the door of Bay Books.
* * *
As Ben walked behind Sandy—forcing himself not to be distracted by the sway of her shapely behind—he cursed himself for being such an idiot. His impulsive ploy to placate Idy with a white lie about Sandy staying to help out had backfired badly.
How could he have forgotten just what a thoughtful, generous person Sandy could be? In that way she hadn’t changed since she was eighteen, insisting on helping his mother wash the dishes at the guesthouse even though she’d been a paying guest.
Of course Sandy wouldn’t lie to his great-aunt. He should have realised that. And now here she was, insisting on honouring her ‘promise’.
The trouble was, the last thing he wanted was his old girlfriend in town, reminding him of what he’d once felt for her. What he didn’t want to feel again. Not for her. Not for anyone.
Point-blank, he did not want Sandy helping out at Bay Books. Did not want to be faced by her positive get-up-and-go-for-it attitude, her infectious laugh and—he couldn’t deny it—her lovely face and sexier-than-ever body.
He gritted his teeth and determined not to fall victim to her charm.
But as she moved through the store he couldn’t help but be moved by her unfeigned delight in what some people called his great-aunt’s latest folly.
He saw the familiar surrounds afresh through her eyes—the wooden bookcases with their frolicking dolphin borders, the magnificent carved wooden counter, the round tables covered in heavy fringed cloths and stacked with books both bestsellers and more off-beat choices, the lamps thoughtfully positioned, the exotic carpets, the promotional posters artfully displayed, the popular children’s corner.
‘I love it—I just love it,’ she breathed. ‘This is how a bookshop should be. Small. Intimate. Connected to its customers.’
Reverently, she stroked the smooth wooden surface of the countertop, caressed with slender pink-tipped fingers the intricate carved dolphins that supported each corner.
‘I’ve never seen anything like it.’
‘It’s different, all right. On her travels Aunt Ida became good friends with a family of Balinese woodcarvers. She commissioned them to fit out the shop. Had all this shipped over.’
Sandy looked around her, her eyes huge with wonder. ‘It’s unique. Awesome. No wonder your aunt wants it in safe hands.’
Some people might find the shop too quaint. Old-fashioned in a world of minimalist steel and glass. Redundant at a time of electronic everything. But obviously not Sandy. He might have expected she’d appreciate Aunt Ida’s eccentric creation. Just as she’d loved his family’s old guesthouse.
She twirled around in the space between the counter and a crammed display of travel paperbacks.
‘It even smells wonderful in here. The wood, of course. And that special smell of books. I don’t know what it is—the paper, the binding.’ She closed her eyes and inhaled with a look of ecstasy. ‘I could just breathe it in all day.’
No.
His fists clenched tight by his sides. That was not what he wanted to hear. He didn’t want Sandy to fit back in here to Dolphin Bay as if she’d never left.
He wanted her gone, back on that highway and heading south. Not connecting so intuitively with the magic his great-aunt had tried to create here. Not being part of his life just by her very presence.
How could he bear to have her practically next door? Every day she’d be calling on him to ask advice on how to run the shop. Seeking his help. Needing him.
And he wouldn’t be able to resist helping her. Might even find himself looking in on the off chance that she needed some assistance with Aunt Ida’s oddball accounting methods. Maybe bringing her a coffee from the hotel café. Suggesting they chat about the business over lunch.
That couldn’t happen. He wouldn’t let it happen. He needed his life to stay just the way it was. He didn’t want to invite love into his life again. And with Sandy there would be no second measures.
Sandy threw herself down on the low, overstuffed sofa his aunt provided for customers to sit on and browse through the books, then jumped up again almost straight away. She clasped her hands together, her eyes shining with enthusiasm. ‘It’s perfect. I am so going to enjoy myself here.’
‘It’s only for a few days,’ he warned. ‘I’ll talk to the agency straight away.’ Again his voice was harsher than he’d intended, edged with fear.
She frowned and he winced at the quick flash of hurt in her eyes. She paused. Her voice was several degrees cooler when she replied.
‘I know that, Ben. I’m just helping out until you get a manager. And I’m glad I can, now that I see how much of her heart your aunt has put into her shop.’
Avoiding his eyes, she stepped behind the counter, placed her hands on the countertop and looked around her. Despite his lack of encouragement, there was an eagerness, an excitement about her that he found disconcerting. And way too appealing.
She pressed her lips firmly together. ‘I’ll try not to bother you too much,’ she said. ‘But I’ll need your help with operating the register. Oh, and the computer, too. Is all her inventory in special files?’
He knew he should show some gratitude for her helping out. After all, he’d been the one to make the ill-conceived suggestion that she should stay. But he was finding it difficult when he knew how dangerous it might be to have Sandy around. Until now he’d been keeping everything together in his under-control life. Or so he’d thought.
‘I can show you the register,’ he said grudgingly. ‘The computer—that’s a mystery. But you won’t be needing to operate that. And, besides, it’s only temporary, right?’
‘Yeah. Very temporary—as you keep reminding me.’
This time she met his gaze head-on.
‘But what makes you think I won’t want to do as good a job as I can for your aunt Ida while I’m here? You heard what she said about needing every day of business.’
‘I would look after her if she got into trouble.’
The truth was he didn’t need the rent his great-aunt insisted on paying him. Could easily settle her overheads.
‘Maybe she doesn’t want to be looked after? Maybe she wants to be totally independent. I hope I’ll be the same when I’m her age.’
Sandy at seventy-five years old? A quick image came to him of her with white hair, all skewered up in a bun on top of her head, and every bit as feisty as his great-aunt.
‘I’m sure you will be,’ he said, and he forced himself not to smile at the oddly endearing thought. Or, by way of comparison, look too appreciatively at the beautiful woman who was Sandy now, on her thirtieth birthday.
‘What about paying the bills?’ she asked.
‘I’ll take care of that.’
‘In other words,’ she said with a wry twist to her mouth, ‘don’t forget that I’m just a temporary caretaker?’
‘Something like that,’ he agreed, determined not to make it easy for her. Though somewhere, hidden deep behind the armour he wore around his feelings, he wished he didn’t have to act so tough. But if he didn’t protect himself he might fall apart—and he couldn’t risk that.
She looked up at him, her expression both teasing and serious at the same time. But her voice wasn’t as confident as it had been. There was a slight betraying quiver that wrenched at him.
‘You know something, Ben? I’m beginning to think you don’t want me in Dolphin Bay,’ she said, her eyes huge, her luscious mouth trembling. She took a deep breath. ‘Am I right?’
He stared at her, totally unable to say anything.
Images flashed through his mind like frames from a flickering cinema screen.
Sandy at that long-ago surf club dance, her long hair flying around her, laughing as she and her sister tried to mimic Kate’s outrageously sexy dancing, smiling shyly when she noticed him watching her.
Sandy breathless and trembling in his arms as he kissed her for the first time.
Sandy in the tiniest of bikinis, overcoming her fear to bravely paddle out on her body-board to meet him where the big waves were breaking.
Sandy, her eyes red and her face blotchy and tear-stained, running to him again and again to hurl herself in his arms for just one more farewell kiss as her father impatiently honked the horn on the family car taking her back to Sydney.
Then nothing. Nothing.
Until now.
He fisted his hands so tightly it hurt the harsh edges of the scars. Scars that were constant reminders of the agony of his loss.
How in hell could he answer her question?
CHAPTER FOUR
HE SAID SHE showed her emotions on her face? She didn’t need a PhD in psychology to read his, either. It was only too apparent he was just buying time before spilling the words he knew she wouldn’t want to hear.
For an interminable moment he said nothing. Shifted his weight from foot to foot. Then he uttered just one drawn-out word. ‘Well...’
He didn’t need to say anything else.
Sandy swallowed hard against the sudden, unexpected shaft of hurt. Forced her voice to sound casual, light-hearted. ‘Hey, I was joking, but...but you’re serious. You really don’t want me around, do you?’
She pushed the rain-damp hair away from her face with fingers that weren’t quite steady. Gripped the edge of the countertop hard, willing the trembling to stop.
When he finally spoke his face was impassive, his voice schooled, his eyes shuttered. ‘You’re right. I don’t think it’s a great idea.’
She couldn’t have felt worse if he’d slapped her. She fought the flush of humiliation that burned her cheeks. Forced herself to meet his gaze without flinching. ‘Why? Because we dated when we were kids?’
‘As soon as people make the connection that you’re my old girlfriend there’ll be gossip, speculation. I don’t want that.’
She swallowed hard against a suddenly dry throat, forced the words out. ‘Because of your...because of Jodi?’
‘That too.’
The counter was a barrier between them but he was close. Touching distance close. So close she could smell the salty, clean scent of him—suddenly heart-achingly familiar. After their youthful making out sessions all those years ago she had relished the smell of him on her, his skin on her skin, his mouth on her mouth. Hadn’t wanted ever to shower it away.
‘But...mainly because of me.’
His words were so quiet she had to strain to hear them over the noise of the rain on the metal roof above.
Bewildered, she shook her head. ‘Because of you? I don’t get it.’
‘Because things are different, Sandy. It isn’t only the town that’s changed.’
His voice was even. Too even. She sensed it was a struggle for him to keep it under control.
He turned his broad shoulders so he looked past her and through the shop window, into the distance towards the bay as he spoke. ‘Did Kate tell you everything about the fire that killed Jodi and my son, Liam?’
‘No.’ Sandy shook her head, suddenly dreading what she might hear. Not sure she could cope with it. Her knees felt suddenly shaky, and she leaned against the countertop for support.
Ben turned back to her and she gasped at the anguish he made no effort to mask.
‘He was only a baby, Sandy, not even a year old. I couldn’t save them. I was in the volunteer fire service and I was off fighting a blaze somewhere else. Everything was tinder-dry from years of drought. We thought Dolphin Bay was safe, but the wind turned. Those big gum trees near the guesthouse caught alight. And then the building. The guests got out. But...but not...’ His head dropped as his words faltered.
He’d said before that he didn’t want to talk about his tragedy—now it was obvious he couldn’t find any more words. With a sudden aching realisation she knew it would never get easier for him.
‘Don’t,’ she murmured, feeling beyond terrible that she’d forced him to relive those unbearable moments. She put her hand up to halt him, maybe to touch him, then let it drop again. ‘You don’t have to tell me any more.’
Big raindrops sat on his eyelashes like tears. She ached to wipe them away. To do something, anything, to comfort him.
But he’d just said he didn’t want her here in town.
He raised his head to face her again. ‘I lost everything that day,’ he said, his eyes bleak. ‘I have nothing to give you.’
She swallowed hard, glanced again at the scars on his hands, imagined him desperately trying to reach his wife and child in the burning guesthouse before it was too late. She realised there were scars where she couldn’t see them. Worse scars than the visible ones.
‘I’m not asking anything of you, Ben. Just maybe to be...to be friends.’
She couldn’t stop her voice from breaking—was glad the rain meant they had the bookshop all to themselves. That no one could overhear their conversation.
He turned his tortured gaze full on to her and she flinched before it.
The words were torn from him. ‘Friends? Can you really be “just friends” with someone you once loved?’
She picked up a shiny hardback from the pile to the left of her on the counter, put it back without registering the title. Then she turned back to face him. Took a deep breath. ‘Was it really love? We were just kids.’
‘It was for me,’ he said, his voice gruff and very serious, his hands clenched tightly by his sides. ‘It hurt that you never answered my letters, never got in touch.’
‘It hurt me that you never wrote like you said you would,’ she breathed, remembering as if it were yesterday the anguish of his rejection. Oh, yes, it had been love for her too.
But a small voice deep inside whispered that perhaps she had got over him faster than he had got over her. She’d never forgotten him but she’d moved on, and the memories of her first serious crush had become fainter and fainter. Sometimes it had seemed as though Ben and the times she’d had with him at Dolphin Bay had been a kind of dream.
She hadn’t fully appreciated then what was apparent now—Ben wasn’t a player, like Jason or her father. When he loved, he loved for keeps. In the intervening years she’d been attracted to men who reminded her of him and been bitterly disappointed when they fell short. She could see now there was only one man like Ben.
They both spoke at the same time.
‘Why—?’
‘Why—?’
Then answered at the same time.
‘My father—’
‘Your father—’
Sandy gave a short nervous laugh. ‘And my mother, too,’ she added, turning away from him, looking down at a display of mini-books of inspirational thoughts, shuffling them backwards and forwards. ‘She told me not to chase after you when you were so obviously not interested. Even my sister, Lizzie, got fed up with me crying over you and told me to get over it and move on.’
‘My dad said the same thing about you. That you had your own life in the city. That you wouldn’t give me a thought when you were back in the bright lights. That we were too young, anyway.’ He snorted. ‘Too young. He and my mother got married when they were only a year older than I was then.’
She looked up to face him. ‘I phoned the guesthouse, you know, but your father answered. I was too chicken to speak to him, though I suspect he knew it was me. He told me not to call again.’
‘He never said.’
Sandy could hear the beating of her own heart over the sound of the rain on the roof. ‘We were young. Maybe too young to doubt them—or defy them.’
An awkward silence—a silence choked by the echoes of words unspoken, of kisses unfulfilled—fell between them until finally she knew she had to be the one to break it.
‘I wonder what would have happened if we had—’
‘Don’t go there, Sandy,’ he said.
She took a step back from his sudden vehemence, banging her hip on the wooden fin of a carved dolphin. But she scarcely felt the pain.
‘Never torture yourself with what if? and if only,’ he continued. ‘Remember what you said? Water under the bridge.’
‘It...it was a long time ago.’
She didn’t know what else she could say. Couldn’t face thinking of the ‘what ifs?’ Ben must have struggled with after the fire.
While he was recalling anguish and irredeemable loss, she was desperately fighting off the memories of how much fun they’d had together all those years ago.
She’d been so serious, so strait-laced, so under her father’s thumb. For heaven’s sake, she’d been old enough to vote but had never stayed out after midnight. Ben had helped her lighten up, take risks—be reckless, even. All the time knowing he’d be there for her if she stumbled.
He hadn’t been a bad boy by any means, but he’d been an exciting boy—an irreverent boy who’d thumbed his nose at her father’s old-fashioned edicts and made her question the ways she’d taken for granted. So many times she’d snuck out to meet him after dark, her heart thundering with both fear of what would happen if she were caught and anticipation of being alone with him.
How good it had felt when he’d kissed her—kissed her at any opportunity when they could be by themselves. How his kisses, his caresses, had stirred her body, awakening yearnings she hadn’t known she was capable of.
Yearnings she’d never felt as strongly since. Not even for Jason.
Saying no to going all the way with Ben that summer was one of the real regrets of her life. Losing her virginity to him would have been an unforgettable experience. How could it not have been when their passion had been so strong?
She couldn’t help remembering their last kiss—with her father about to drag her into the car—fired by unfulfilled passion and made more poignant in retrospect because she’d had no idea that it would be her last kiss from Ben.
Did he remember it too?
She searched his face, but he seemed immersed in his own dark thoughts.
Wearily, she wiped her hand over her forehead as if she could conjure up answers. Why had those kisses been printed so indelibly on her memory? Unleashed passion? Hormones? Pheromones? Was it the magic of first love? Or was it a unique power that came only from Ben?
Ben who had grown into this intense, unreadable, tormented man whom she could not even pretend to know any more.
The rain continued to fall. It muffled the sound of the cars swishing by outside the bookshop, made it seem as if they were in their own world, cocooned by their memories from the reality of everyday life in Dolphin Bay. From all that had happened in the twelve years since they’d last met.
Ben cleared his throat, leaned a little closer to her over the barrier of the counter.
‘I’m glad you told me you never got my letters, that you tried to phone,’ he said, his voice gruff. ‘I never understood how you could just walk away from what we had.’