Mr Right Now

by Karly Lane

  Her phone ringing inside the car broke the moment and, with a reluctant sigh, Hadley opened her eyes and got back in.

  She glanced down at the centre console where her phone sat and read the name on the screen, before turning it off. Another reporter wanting a quote … or, better yet, a story. Hadley gave a harsh snort at that—there was a special kind of irony in the fact that she roamed the world in search of a good story for a living, and now she was the source of mindless entertainment for local tabloids and cheap gossip magazines.

  Maybe if she’d just been a war correspondent, she’d have got away with remaining under the radar of nosy journalists but, unfortunately, when a lowly overseas correspondent marries a national media celebrity it’s a little trickier to keep a divorce quiet.

  She pulled back out onto the dirt driveway, but the tranquillity of the previous moment had passed. She’d been dreading this part of coming home for months.

  Hadley may be a fully grown woman, with a successful career reporting breaking news from all around the world, but when it came to telling her parents that the marriage she’d been leading them to believe was fine was actually over … well, she may as well be thirteen years old again and about to tell them the principal would be calling them with unpleasant news.

  The house loomed ahead and Hadley smiled despite the anxiety she was feeling. She knew her parents wouldn’t disown her over this, but she hated disappointing them. She hated being a failure, and that’s what she felt like—a big, fat failure. How hard was it to stay married for goodness sake? She hadn’t even been able to do that.

  Worse still—her family had always had doubts about Mitch, but she’d been so determined to prove everyone wrong that she’d ignored all the warning signs that told her she was making a huge mistake.

  She’d stupidly believed she had to be more like her perfect older sister, Harmony. She’d grown up in her sister’s shadow at school—the teachers all perplexed that two children from the same parents could be so different. Harmony had never been more aptly named. She was the perfect student. The perfect daughter, the perfect wife. She left school and got married into a perfectly respectable family from Griffith, where she went on to have two perfect children—one boy and one girl. They had a beautiful house and expensive cars. She was on all the important committees and volunteered in her spare time, the woman was a walking advertisement for how to have the perfect life. Hadley gave a small, bitter snort. Until she wasn’t.

  Her older, perfect sister was now divorced, but even that didn’t seem to dim the light of her halo. She was now the perfect single mother … another failing Hadley felt keenly after she’d had a miscarriage only a handful of months earlier. But she wasn’t going there. Focus on the anger, she reminded herself. That’s what had got her through the past few months. It was far more empowering to be angry. Hadley still couldn’t quite believe it. Harmony had been having an affair with her husband.

  Hadley blinked away a sting in her eyes as a combination of relief to be home, and regret that she was going to bring disappointment to her family, waged a silent war inside her as she parked the car. She’d managed to plaster a bright smile on her face by the time her mother appeared on the verandah upstairs and give a surprised yelp of delight when she recognised her daughter.

  ‘Robert!’ Lavinia Callahan yelled. ‘Robert, come and see who just arrived!’

  God, she loved her parents. Married over forty years, they were still as in love as they had been back when they first met. And they were absolutely devoted to each and every one of their four children; which included her two older brothers, Lincoln and Griffith. They were her anchor.

  Hadley quickly climbed the front stairs of the sprawling, low-set Queenslander house she’d grown up in, and was immediately wrapped in her mother’s arms. For a split second she could imagine she was six years old again and safe from all the troubles in the world.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell us you were coming?’

  ‘I wanted to surprise you,’ she said, grateful her father chose that moment to wander outside and see what all the fuss was about.

  ‘Well, I’ll be! Look what the cat dragged in,’ her father said, opening his arms wide at her approach.

  ‘Hi, Dad.’ Hadley breathed in the smell of his freshly washed shirt as he hugged her tight.

  ‘“Wanted to surprise us,” she says,’ Lavinia admonished from behind them. ‘You and your brother have a lot in common,’ she added. ‘This is something Linc would do.’

  ‘We just like to keep you on your toes. That’s all, Mum.’

  ‘How long are you here for? What are you doing? Where’s Mitch?’ She shot the questions off in rapid succession, her gaze moving to scan around her daughter’s car.

  ‘Give the girl time to breathe, woman,’ Bob chuckled.

  ‘Ah, Mitch is …’ Hadley hesitated as her mother looked back at her with expectant obliviousness. Tell her, a voice inside pressed. ‘… Not here,’ she finished.

  ‘Well, I can see that. Is he coming out later?’

  ‘No. He’s working,’ she said slowly.

  ‘Oh. Well, that’s a shame,’ Lavinia said, patting her daughter’s arm. ‘I guess that means we get you all to ourselves then.’

  Hadley smiled weakly. She had to tell them, but surely there was some kind of protocol with things like this? You couldn’t very well be expected to announce your divorce within the first five minutes of arriving home. Her parents both stood there beaming at her, happy with their unexpected visit. No, it would be better if she led into it later on.

  Two

  Oliver Dawson grabbed his dog, Blue, by the scruff of the neck and rubbed him vigorously in their daily greeting ritual as he stepped out onto the verandah. ‘You wanna go for a drive?’ he asked, lightly roughing the animal in a show of affection. ‘Go on then, get in,’ he told the dog, and watched him turn in circles a few times before they headed over to the farm ute.

  Ollie opened the door and the red-coated kelpie leaped gracefully into the ute’s cabin, and sat up on the passenger seat, waiting patiently for his owner to start the car.

  The sound of his ringtone made him pause, and he pulled the phone from his pocket to answer it. ‘Hey, loser,’ he greeted his best friend and neighbour, Griffin Callahan, in lieu of a more traditional hello. ‘Ready to get your butt kicked tonight?’

  ‘Whatever, tosser,’ Griff scoffed. ‘That’s what I’m calling about. I can’t make darts tonight.’

  ‘What? You really are scared, aren’t ya?’ Ollie added in a gleeful tone.

  ‘Yeah, right.’

  ‘So what’s your excuse?’

  ‘We’ve got a surprise visitor. Hadley’s come home. Mum wants us all at dinner tonight.’

  Ollie felt something kick in his chest briefly at the mention of his mate’s sister, but he cleared his throat and forced his attention back to the conversation. ‘I guess I could let you off this once. I’m gonna tell the guys that you were only using your sister as an excuse ’cause you were scared, though,’ he added.

  ‘Yeah, yeah,’ Griff drawled. ‘Enjoy your moment. Next week you won’t have anything to gloat about. Hey,’ he added before they hung up, ‘drop by and say g’day to Hads when you get a chance.’

  ‘Yeah. Sure. I’ll do that,’ Ollie said, before disconnecting the call and staring out through the front window in an attempt to get his disjointed thoughts under control.

  Hadley Callahan had always managed to throw him off guard, even as children. He and his twin sister, Olivia, had grown up with the Callahan kids, and for a long time they’d been more like cousins than neighbours, until one day they weren’t … or, more to the point, Hadley wasn’t. Seemingly out of the blue, Ollie had started having different feelings towards his best friend’s little sister and everything changed.

  He’d never acted on any of these impulses, though. He wasn’t game. Griffin would probably have killed him if he’d told him he liked his sister as he’d always been protective of her. And th
en there was Hadley herself—she had been no stranger to throwing a punch if she had to, and he hadn’t been too keen on possibly being on the end of one if she hadn’t felt the same way. But that was when they’d been in high school. They’d just been kids. It was all pretty stupid really.

  Blue gave a soft whine beside him and tilted his head, dragging Ollie out of his momentary trip down memory lane. ‘Yeah, all right,’ he said reaching over to turn the key. ‘I’m goin’.’

  Drop by and say g’day, Griff had said. Ollie clenched his jaw as he drove down the paddock to where he’d left his tractor yesterday afternoon. He wished it was that easy. It should be that easy—only every time Hadley came home it stirred up this restlessness and regret inside him.

  Once he had thought maybe he could take a chance and tell Hadley how he felt, but something had stopped him. What was the point? It couldn’t work. She travelled all over the world and had a career she wasn’t likely to give up in order to live back here. He was a farmer. It was what he knew and, after his dad’s accident, it was his responsibility to keep things running on the farm. It was doubtful his father would ever go back to full-time farming again—his mother wanted him to retire, go and travel a bit and relax. But the new paddock-to-plate venture they’d started as something to give their old man an interest had really taken off, much more than any of them had anticipated. There was no way Ollie could leave the place even if he wanted to.

  And, yet, there had been times when he couldn’t shake the feeling that Hadley Callahan was the woman he was meant to be with. Of course, her wedding had been a bit of a setback …

  He gripped the steering wheel tighter as he remembered watching her walk down the aisle towards the moron she’d been about to marry. He always thought it was a bit of a joke when movies got to the part in a ceremony where they were asked if anyone had any reason to object, to speak now or forever hold their peace, but found he was somewhat disappointed that Hadley’s ceremony hadn’t included it. Okay, so he probably wouldn’t have actually stood up and objected. After all, what would he say? ‘You’re making a mistake, Hadley. You can’t marry a tosser like Mitch Samuals.’

  Ever since she announced her engagement, on Instagram, her whole family had been trying to delicately point this out at different times. He was pretty sure she wouldn’t have thanked him for the interruption to her picture-perfect bloody wedding. So instead he’d sat there, feeling like his insides had been ripped out and struggling to look like the happy childhood friend from next door. He’d made sure he dulled the pain at the reception by drinking more than he’d drunk in a long time—or ever since for that matter—but it hadn’t really helped.

  He’d even convinced himself that he’d moved on from whatever this lingering feeling was. Now that Hadley was married, the sane part of his brain told him it really was time to forget her—but then one mention of her name and clearly he’d been fooling himself to think he had.

  And then, during last harvest, Hadley’s dick of a husband was caught out, with Hadley’s older sister. Of course, Ollie wasn’t supposed to know anything about it, only he’d found out from his sister, Olivia, who’d been the one to stumble upon the little rendezvous between the two and confided in him. For a lot of reasons, he wished he hadn’t heard about the betrayal—mostly because it was damn hard not to act on his compulsion to beat the crap out of Mitch for hurting Hadley but, running a close second, was the fact that ever since he’d found out, his hopes had been reignited and were currently raging like an out-of-control bushfire.

  It hadn’t been hard to keep the secret around Hadley, because she wasn’t even here, but it was knowing that his best mate, Hadley’s older brother Griff, knew about it and he couldn’t talk it over with him, that had been tough. Ollie had given Griff plenty of chances to bring it up, asking if there was something on his mind when he’d clearly been distracted on occasion, but Griff was the loyal kind, and he’d never mentioned it. They were a lot alike that way, Ollie thought. But it would have been a hell of a lot easier over these past few months if he could have vented a bit of his frustration alongside his best friend.

  And now Hadley was home.

  He looked up at the troop carrier that came ambling towards him and gave a weary sigh. For a guy who’d been so hard to win over on the idea of this damn business venture, you sure as hell wouldn’t know it now looking at Bill Dawson as he pulled up in the paddock nearby, climbing out of the driver’s seat slowly and standing in front of the small group of students and their teacher, whom he’d brought out.

  Ollie gave a dutiful wave as he passed by them on his next run and, although he’d never admit it aloud to anyone, he actually got a bit of a kick out of the excited waves he always got back from the kids. It didn’t matter if they were a kindergarten group or a TAFE class—they all waved. It seemed every age loved a big tractor.

  He played a minimal role in his family’s paddock-to-plate business. This was his parents and sister’s project, and he was happy to let them deal with that side of things, allowing him to concentrate on the farming. He hadn’t initially been as optimistic as his sister had been about this new venture. In fact, he’d never thought she’d get their old man to go for it in the first place. But he’d underestimated his sister’s persuasiveness. He’d also underestimated how popular this thing would turn out to be. He had to hand it to her, when Olivia got an idea in her head she threw herself into it one hundred per cent. She’d done all the numbers and researched the idea, presenting their parents with a proposal they were hard done by to ignore. His father had also surprised him by just how motivated he was. He really seemed to enjoy having a bunch of kids traipsing about after him, asking questions all day. Ollie couldn’t really remember him ever being this patient before, as he explained the process of whatever they were looking at—be it cropping or the beef side of things. Then again, he supposed, it was different this way. His dad wasn’t trying to teach a sometimes-headstrong son how to do something, while trying to race against the clock to get whatever jobs on the farm needed to be done. They hadn’t had the luxury of time when he was growing up and his father had been trying to run things with the help of Ollie and only a few hired hands when things were tough. He shouldn’t be surprised his dad had taken to it all like a duck to water. He’d always been a great teacher, who’d managed to teach Ollie everything he knew.

  The troop carrier moved on to check out the next stop on the tour, and Ollie sent them another wave and gave a short chuckle as he caught a glimpse of his father’s face through the driver’s window wearing a smile from ear to ear. It was good to see him happy again. Ollie hadn’t been sure that his dad ever would be following his accident on the farm, but this idea of his sister’s had been exactly what his father had needed to feel useful once again. It also didn’t hurt that the venture kept father and son out of each other’s pockets throughout the day. A farmer who was unable to farm was a disaster waiting to happen. No one liked to feel useless when there was work to be done—least of all a man who’d been farming all his life and wasn’t ready to retire.

  Three

  Hadley sank onto the lounge in her brother’s house with a weary sigh later that afternoon. Beside her, her best friend, and soon to be sister-in-law, Olivia, watched her with a sympathetic smile.

  ‘When are you going to tell them?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know, Liv. The whole drive home, I played it out in my head, you know?’ she said, and saw her friend nod. ‘I thought, tell them straight away—like ripping off a band aid. But, then, they were both so happy to see me and I just couldn’t make myself do it.’

  ‘Do you want me to come with you?’

  ‘No.’ Hadley blew out a long breath. ‘I just have to stop being such a baby and tell them.’

  ‘It’s a pretty big deal,’ Olivia said, eyeing her friend with a gentle look. ‘You’ve been through a lot lately. And I can understand why you’re reluctant to do this, but it isn’t your fault, Had. You aren’t the one who broke u
p your marriage. What Harmony and Mitch did …’

  ‘How am I supposed to tell them that?’ Hadley searched her friend’s eyes, feeling almost frantic at the thought. ‘This is going to kill Mum and Dad.’

  ‘Let’s just calm down and think it through,’ Olivia said in her steady, reliable tone. ‘This will not kill your parents,’ she started. ‘Yes, it’ll upset them and, yes,’ she continued when Hadley opened her mouth to protest, ‘things are going to get pretty messy for a while but, like you said yourself, it’s only a matter of time before they find out through the media. You can’t allow that to happen,’ she said seriously. ‘They need to hear it from you, now. Before they find out alongside everyone else in town.’

  ‘You’re right. As usual,’ she added dryly. ‘Why are you always the voice of reason?’

  ‘Because I’m a lawyer and because it’s easy to be reasonable when I’m not the one having to do it,’ she said, with a lopsided smile. ‘Griff and I can be there if that helps. We could have dinner here or something?’

  ‘No. I think I need to do it alone … but thank you,’ she said, managing a smile. Hadley knew they wanted to help and, in truth, she wasn’t sure how she would have got through the past few months without her best friend and brother to talk her down when she felt like she was losing her grip on everything. But, this, she felt she needed to do alone. Her parents wouldn’t want to be hit with something like this with other people around.

  Fortified with strong coffee and a pep talk, Hadley left her friend’s place and headed back towards the main house, determination in every step. Just sit them down and tell them, she repeated.

  ‘Hello, darling. That was a quick visit. I didn’t expect to see you again until dinner time. I know what you and Liv are like once you get yacking,’ her mother said as she placed a roast in the oven for dinner.

  ‘Mum, I need to talk to you and Dad about something. It’s important.’ There she’d said it. Seeing the concern on her mother’s face, she knew there was no way she was backing out of this now.