by Jennie Jones
His eyes held hers for a second before he spoke. ‘You won’t need a car when you get back to Sydney.’
If she ever got back. ‘It’ll free you up,’ she insisted.
‘For what?’
‘For, like, if you need to go to Canberra and stay overnight again. Or something.’
‘I don’t need to go to Canberra again.’
Had he had a one-night stand? Gone to the capital to meet his friend, then met up with a petite, tidy woman and spent the night making endless love to her while she wrapped her waif-like limbs around his lean hips?
‘Thanks for the lift,’ she said, and got out of the car.
‘Edie,’ he called.
She turned, still dazed by the thought of the petite woman clamouring all over his solid body.
‘Don’t worry if you’re having a good time and you want to stay a bit longer. Just text me.’
‘I wouldn’t do that. We made a deal. I’ll hold it. Ten thirty.’
‘Just have fun, would you?’ His smile was soft and tender, and a little bit teasy—or maybe glowy? It was hard to tell in this light, and she was probably just hopeful about the glowy-eyed look.
‘Will do.’ She smiled, waved, and sighed when he drove away.
He was so kind. So caring of his friends, and he did think of her as a friend. They’d shared so many happy times when she was younger. Not so many after she became a woman but that was probably because he’d gone to the army by then and given his heart and soul to his country.
One time, an old boyfriend from when she’d been fourteen told her how Ryan had had words with her few boyfriends back then. Giving them advice on how to treat a girl. Although her ex-boyfriend said it was more like a warning. Danger. Alert. Beware. Get out of line with Edie and you’ll be answering to me.
How kind was that? For all his quietly commanding nature, his steadfastness, it was also his consideration and his care for others that shone. He was worthy of the biggest, brightest, most praiseworthy medal ever. Look how he befriended Ted and didn’t bother that the man was a bloody nuisance.
Talking of whom …
She smiled and an unexpected shyness enveloped her when Ted strode towards her, stomach first. He’d be wanting to thank her for the photography request.
She’d done something good for Ted. Her own idea too, not something she felt she ought to do. And he would take fantastic photos. They’d keep an album at one of the shops in town to show visitors, or to thumb through and laugh as they all remembered having such great fun that time Edie produced a play. Perhaps Ted would like to keep the album in the town hall.
‘Hello, Ted. Gorgeous evening.’ The solar lights on the claret ash trees had powered up during the day and were twinkling down Main Street.
Ted obviously didn’t agree, going by the look on his face.
‘I’ll consider your request to take photographs for the play,’ he said when he came up to her, his frown deepened to grooves. ‘But don’t think you can shove me around.’
‘I wouldn’t do that, Ted.’ What on earth was wrong with him?
‘I’ll gather my intel first.’
‘For what?’
‘For determining my response to your needs.’
Please don’t let him back out of playing the dead body. Maybe Gary would do it? No, he couldn’t because she might have to get him to play the groom. Exasperation took a walk in her head. Why was it that every time something good happened—like Ryan being so kind—bad luck followed? She couldn’t even get a stupid play in an out-of-the-way country town organised. This would not be happening if she were still in Sydney.
‘Now, if you don’t mind,’ Ted said, ‘I’m off home to the safety of my man-cave. It’s dangerous out here for a man alone. It’s a veritable minefield being an eligible widower. You women think you can push us around. But don’t think you—or Magdalena Flirty-pants—can treat me like a sugar daddy.’
‘I won’t,’ Edie assured him.
Ted puffed up. ‘Ryan told me to string you and Magdalena along a bit. Let you know who’s boss. So that’s what I’m doing.’
He swung around and marched back to the ice-cream van. He didn’t bother with a car as he drove the van wherever he needed to go.
Edie scrunched her face. Ted had to have got that wrong. Kind, caring, decent Ryan would never betray his friends this way.
She shook it off and made her way up the steps to Kookaburra’s front door.
The hotel was pumping and Edie and Olivia were snuggled up on leather sofas by the fire, with a half-full bottle of shiraz on the coffee table between them. Friendship thickened the air around Edie and the fire crackled with happy abandon. She was so relaxed she might have kicked off her shoes and curled her legs up on the sofa.
They’d been ensconced in their little nook for nearly an hour—Olivia had a night off from her hotel manager’s duties—and it was as though they had gone back in time to when they were teenagers. They’d giggled about Ted and his strange attitude, caught up quickly on general news and had settled on getting personal.
‘Is your dad around?’ Edie asked as she remembered another necessity for the play.
‘Gone back to the B&B.’
Olivia lived in Kookaburra’s back room, which had been renovated into a suite for her, but her parents, Dan and Charlotte Bradford, lived in the yellow house at the northern entrance to town. It hadn’t been a B&B for years, but there was some old story, which Edie only vaguely remembered, about when Olivia’s mum first came to town. Charlotte bought the B&B and there’d been some odd to-do about colour changes. Ted would probably remember, or Mrs Tam.
‘I wanted to ask if your dad would be prepared to run a front-of-house bar for the week the play runs,’ Edie said.
Olivia brightened, her eyes wide. ‘Let me!’ She pushed her russet-red hair behind her ears, then poured herself a glass of wine. ‘It’ll be something different to do.’
‘Would you?’ Edie asked. ‘I’ll have enough room to seat about fifty people and the play’s running for six nights.’ She couldn’t add a matinee because most people would be working during the day. ‘I’m hoping we’ll get a full house each night.’ She had some misgivings about this. Would all 182 residents—apart from the kids, so maybe around 150—want to buy tickets? She’d have a problem if they all wanted to come on the opening or the last nights. She’d have a word with Mrs Tam and when it came to buying tickets, Mrs Tam could kindly persuade people to spread their love of a good play around and book for Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday nights too.
She also had to borrow fifty chairs off Ted from his town hall stockpile. Hopefully he’d get over the impression that he had to show Edie who was boss. God knows where he’d got the idea that Ryan would tell him to not let her push him around.
‘So are you gay?’ Olivia asked, pushing the wine bottle across to Edie.
‘Not everybody in the theatre is gay.’
‘I know that. But the rumour going around is that you like women and you’re after me. So I thought it best to tell you that although I love and admire you for many reasons, I have no wish to kiss you on the lips.’
‘What on earth are you talking about?’
‘Gary Waterman asked me if I was gay. That’s how the conversation about you started. He heard we had a date tonight, and thought I must be a womanising lesbian too. Like you. They were his words, by the way.’
‘A womanising …?’ Edie grabbed the wine bottle and poured a glass. Honestly, she should cast him as the simpleton groom. She raised the glass to her mouth. ‘Is he a total bumpkin?’
‘Only partly, as far as I can tell. He’s very into you, though. Said he was devastated when Ryan told him you were gay.’
Edie spluttered and banged her wine glass down. ‘Why would Ryan tell him I’m gay when I’m not?’
Olivia grinned. ‘Interesting, huh?’ She leaned over the coffee table. ‘Why would Mr Special Forces Fitness tell Gary that?’ She pulled back and crossed her legs, nurs
ing her wine glass with a satisfied look on her face. ‘Because Mr Fitness likes you and doesn’t like Gary liking you.’
‘Don’t be absurd.’
‘He’s jealous.’
‘Ryan just thinks of me as an old friend.’ Was he laughing at her? Poking fun at her for some reason? He obviously had told Ted to be negative towards her. And now this!
She took a long drink of wine and slammed her glass down again. He’d upstaged her in the dastardliest manner imaginable: in the guise of a kind, caring and reliable friend. So why the Mr Nice Guy routine in the kitchen earlier and in the car on the drive in? He was probably still feeling all soft and gooey after his big night with his five-foot-nothing neat little woman in Canberra.
‘Ryan definitely likes you,’ Olivia said again. ‘Your mum told my mum.’
Edie looked up. ‘Are they interfering?’
‘Undoubtedly,’ Olivia said, nodding. ‘My mum’s so worried I don’t get out enough to meet interesting men that at one point when Gary first arrived, she pushed us together.’
Even Edie had to laugh.
‘I know,’ Olivia said. ‘Unbelievable the depths a desperate mother will go to.’
‘But are you lonely here, Olivia?’ Edie asked, forgetting about Ryan for a moment as she studied her friend’s face.
Olivia shrugged.
‘Truth,’ Edie persisted.
Olivia uncrossed her legs and leaned forward. ‘Don’t tell a soul.’
Edie leaned closer. ‘Promise.’
‘I love it here,’ Olivia said in a whisper. ‘I don’t ever want to be anywhere else but Swallow’s Fall.’ She settled back on her sofa and sipped her wine. ‘I have no idea how you go swanning around the country and all those big cities when you could be living here, content, cosy, and shacked up with Mr Special Forces—driving him into a sexual frenzy with your magnetism and stunning white linen dresses.’ She wiggled her eyebrows.
‘Don’t be absurd,’ Edie said again, and tried not to smile. Boy was she going to get Mr Special Forces back for this.
9
Action!
Edie read through her cast list, which was sitting on the bathroom benchtop, while she brushed her teeth.
The Dead Body: Ted
Leading Lady, Edwina: Edie C-ranger
Leading Man, Riley: Tony Summerfield
Simpleton Groom: Gary?? (Ask Josh again. Be REALLY persuasive.)
Penniless Opera Singer: Magdalena Cartwright (Haven't asked her yet!)
Pugnacious Detective: (Oh, God-Ted!)
She scrubbed her teeth more briskly. It might work. The detective didn’t come on stage until Act II when the dead body had been carted off to the undertakers.
She rinsed her mouth, plopped her toothbrush into a holder then pulled her dressing gown tightly around her and fastened the belt.
The morning sunshine sprang through the venetian blind on the bathroom window as though pushing and shoving everyone beneath its rays to get out and get on with their beautiful lives.
Edie didn’t have a beautiful life. Not completely beautiful, although parts were special and made her insides warm, like being with her family again. Being loved unconditionally again. Even being in town again, surprisingly. Although after her conversation with Ted last night—plus not having her cast list finalised the way she’d hoped—it was like there was only a sparkle of sunshine inside her when there ought to be a sky-full.
She made a mental note. Priority: call Viv. Viv’s sunny nature would have a good influence on Edie’s less-than-satisfied outlook. Except Viv was out again all day today with their father. Ethan was taking her on his rounds. Was there nothing this wonderful woman couldn’t do? She went out, happy to have their dad carry her from his work ute to whatever field where whatever cow or horse in need of attention was grazing. There was nothing ordinary about Viv Granger. Viv had nerve, and verve, and energy.
So what did the marvellous Edie Granger have? She studied her reflection. Was she ordinary woman facing her fake self in the mirror, or actress trying to find the ordinary woman in the reflection?
Why did Ryan call her Glam-puss? Another annoyance now, since she was sure he was making fun of her.
She hadn’t said much to him last night after he picked her up from Kookaburra’s at ten thirty. She muttered something about having had a great time with Olivia but being too tired to chat. She’d only just managed to thank him for picking her up before making her way into the house.
More surprising than learning that Ryan Munroe—one-time friend—had been so free with his jocularity behind her back, was discovering that he’d spent the evening moving his gear back into the house.
She angled her face and checked herself in the mirror again. She wasn’t beautiful. She didn’t have fine, delicate bone structure like a petite, tidy woman might have. Her lips were full but her mouth too wide. Her nose was slim but her cheekbones too prominent. She did have excellent eyebrows that were the same colour as her hair—and she treasured her hair! The colour, the length, and the way she maximised its use, whether for a 1960s chick with a beehive, or a 1950s Hollywood star. Honestly, there were occasions when she thought she looked just a little bit like Rita Hayworth. From a certain angle.
But her eyes, though a pleasing tawny brown colour, were a little too far apart. Plus, she was too tall. Not that she minded being just over five foot ten, but a lot of leading men weren’t much taller, which meant she had to wear flats onstage. This was fine if it was Shakespeare or a historical, and it wasn’t too bad when it was a modern play either, but it was particularly disappointing when it was a play set in the middle of the last century, when women wore nylons, or seamed stockings and pencil skirts. Impossible to show off shapely ankles and slender calves in flat pumps.
She looked down at her short, white satin dressing gown. Gem said she ought to wear green and orange for healing purposes, but what an awful mix. And how much bloody healing did she need, while her jokey ex-friend Ryan got away with just needing to wear more blue.
She pulled herself together and plastered moisturiser on her face. She screwed the lid back on the pot, pulled the turbaned towel from her head and shook her hair free. It hung in wet strands but she’d left her comb and brush in her bedroom.
She lifted the slats on the blind on the window and peered out at her property. It calmed her a little, all that countryside. Someone told her that Jindalee might be an Aboriginal word meaning ‘a bare hill’. Her house sat on what was more of a gently sloping gradient than a hill, and it wasn’t bare because the grass was knee high and the dandelions doubled in quantity every time she looked out the window.
A row of straggly pear trees stood where the fence ought to be, and wandering jasmine wound its way through the dandelions and climbed the trunks of the poplar trees. It smelled glorious. The rambling garden would be good for the multitude of cats she’d start adopting when she opened the house to the public, hoping for additional income because she couldn’t even get a part of the understudy. Jindalee Gardens, part of ex-actress and total failure Edie Granger’s strange and unkempt Jindalee House Estate. Entry fifty cents. Be careful not to tread on the kittens.
No matter all the turmoil going on inside her, she could appreciate the beauty in Jindalee’s messy lushness.
She let the blind drop. Maybe she should have chosen an art career after all. She knew enough about it, having an internationally recognised artist for a mother. Maybe she could become an art critic, if her acting career did end up going down the drain and she was stuck here.
But what about bloody Mr Super Elite Fitness? Why was he hanging around, still at a loose end? Didn’t he have a goal to pursue? Hadn’t he made a decision about what he was going to do for the rest of his life now he’d left the army? Why had he left the army? She thought he’d loved it. There was hardly a thrill to be had in Swallow’s Fall.
Which is possibly why he’d sought some thrills in Canberra.
She straightened the bath mat on the tiled
floor, threw her towel into the laundry basket, and made for the door. She was going to pay Ryan back. She just wasn’t sure how, but if only she could get someone to film it. Roll camera. Quiet please, and action!
She was stopped after opening the door by the sight of Ryan walking down the landing from the second bathroom. Her heart somersaulted and her breath rushed so fast to her throat, she nearly choked.
‘Morning,’ he said as he walked past without meeting her eye and headed for his room at the back of the house.
She couldn’t speak. One, because she wasn’t talking to him much, and two, because he was wearing dark-grey track pants and nothing else!
She’d seen Gary in track pants once. He had them pulled up so high it looked like his waistline was just below his breastbone. He’d been wearing a flannel shirt though—tucked in—so thankfully he hadn’t been bare-chested.
Ryan’s track pants hung low on his hips. Probably because his waist was tapered and a lot narrower than the mighty width of his chest, so the waistband of his track pants had nothing else to cling to. No fat. Not even a little bit. Not even a gram.
How dare he parade around her house, showing off his super-strong practically naked body in such a tantalising manner, after being so awfully contemptuous about her to Ted and Gary?
She stepped out of the bathroom, pulling the belt of her dressing gown tighter. ‘Ryan!’ she called, halting him. ‘When you look at me, what do you see? Am I bold and earthy? Or am I colourfully naturalistic? Or just plain arty?’
His expression was nonplussed. ‘At the moment, Dazzlepants, you’re still a bit wet from the shower, your hair’s knotted and you’ve got either toothpaste or moisturiser on your chin. But you look okay.’
‘Shall I tell you what you are?’
‘No, thanks.’ He turned.
‘You’re a saturation of flat tones,’ she said before he moved off. ‘You’re surrounded by negative space. You’ve got no focal point. You’re all broken colour and distortion.’
He put a hand on one of his lean, fat-free hips and gave her a puzzled look. ‘And I thought you disliked me.’