The House On Jindalee Lane

by Jennie Jones

  ‘You should wear more blue,’ she told him. ‘In fact, you should wear clothes!’ She stormed off and left him to it.

  Ryan didn’t look up from the third wooden frame he’d constructed that morning, even when Edie sighed loudly for the hundredth time before at last flouncing out of the barn and heading for the house.

  He threw the hammer down and put his hands on his hips.

  He ought to be given a citation for steadfastness for putting up with her huffiness—whatever that was about—and with the image still stuck in his head of her wearing that dressing gown earlier. It was more like a silky body-wrap. Satiny smooth and clinging to her curves, the hemline sitting mid-toned-thigh. She’d wanted him to put clothes on?

  This is why he’d moved into the barn in the first place. He didn’t want to be tormented by more carnal thoughts than necessary every time he met her going in or coming out of the bathroom.

  He walked to the back of the barn, ducking behind a thin partition and into the room he’d used as his bedroom.

  He didn’t want her buying a car either. He had to keep her within sight, or at least stay within yelling distance.

  He reflected once more on what he’d overheard and discovered the other night in Sydney.

  He’d sat at the bar in The Green Room, watching the theatre lot rubber-neck and table swap as they networked, then asked for a table for dinner, and requested he be seated in a quiet corner. With only one small table in a corner free at that time, he was seated next to Buchanan and his suits. They were lawyers as he’d first thought. Although more like manicured henchmen than citizens with integrity. Being close by, intel had been easy to gather as he listened to the conversation between them, ostensibly reading a book while eating his porterhouse steak, mixed leaf salad, and French fries.

  ‘We have to shut her up,’ one of the suits said.

  Buchanan nodded, but didn’t speak.

  ‘Slap a libel suit on her,’ the second said.

  Buchanan dabbed his mouth with a white napkin, placed it to one side of his plate and rested his hands on the table. ‘Which would work except for the one fact you both obviously have forgotten. We don’t know where she is.’

  ‘She’s gone into hiding but it won’t take us much longer to find out where.’

  ‘Then you can sue her.’

  ‘I intend to,’ Buchanan said. ‘But not before I have more information.’

  ‘What you’ve been spreading around is enough for now,’ suit number one said. ‘She won’t work again. Not even on the fringe.’

  Buchanan acknowledged this with a tight, self-satisfied smile. ‘I don’t want to destroy her career, I want to annihilate it.’ He looked across the dining room, directly at Tony.

  ‘He won’t say anything about her,’ suit number two advised, looking over his shoulder at Tony. ‘He just acts dumb.’

  ‘Probably because he is,’ suit number one said with a derisive curl of his mouth.

  ‘I want you to locate Hanger. He’ll find her.’

  The silence went on for so long that Ryan held his breath.

  ‘Surely there’s no need for that,’ suit one said.

  ‘We don’t know how to get hold of him.’

  ‘Use the same source as before.’

  ‘That was just talk. We don’t know if he’s even real,’ suit one said, with a hint of fear in his voice. ‘You don’t want an association, Marcus.’

  ‘Keep your voice down,’ suit two said. ‘Marcus, why so tough?’

  ‘She’s made me look like a fool,’ Buchanan responded. ‘How dare she portray me in her pathetic melodrama?’

  ‘It got a lot of good press when she did it in Sydney,’ suit one mumbled.

  ‘Nobody would say you’re a fool, Marcus. Not to your face.’

  Buchanan folded his fingers to his palm and studied his nails. ‘Alana is making noises about divorce. As agreeable as that would be—’ He looked up, evaluating both men sitting opposite him. ‘I will not lose control of Strike Productions.’

  ‘But you’ve taken most of Alana’s money out of her hands already.’

  Buchanan slapped the table. ‘I doubled her money. I worked for it. Sweated for it, while she sat back and enjoyed the spoils.’

  ‘Well, it did come from her family in the first place—’

  Suit two didn’t say any more when Buchanan pinned him with a dark-eyed stare.

  ‘Alana isn’t worried about the money,’ suit one said to his mate. ‘She’s got control of Strike. She’d get at least half of Marcus’s money in any divorce settlement too, given it came from her family in the first place.’

  ‘Thank you for your candidness,’ Buchanan said in a tone that suggested he was stoically keeping face in a public arena. ‘But you know how petulant Alana is when her claws are out. She’s spitting and hissing at me and we’re not even on the same continent. She still has fifty-five per cent control of Strike. I can’t afford to divorce Alana and lose my production company, and if this nonsense with Granger having portrayed me in her stupid play becomes public, and the press find out she was in my hotel room, that’s what’s going to happen. Get me someone. Find this Hanger person.’

  ‘No.’ Suit two threw his linen napkin down. ‘Marcus, no heavy hand. This is not how we do things.’

  Ryan yawned and turned a page of the book he was supposedly reading.

  ‘We need to keep this clean,’ suit one said. ‘We need to keep you under the radar, too. You’ve got the photos. Use them. It worked with the others.’

  ‘Find Hanger,’ Buchanan said. ‘Or get me someone like him.’ He stood, and the suits moved fast. One beckoned a waitress as suit two followed Marcus to the door.

  Ryan thanked the waiter who came to take away his plate, closed his book and slipped it in his daypack, then pulled his wallet out of his back pocket and stood, ready to leave.

  Whoever the hell Hanger was, there’d been a reverential silence when his name had first come up.

  ‘Ryan!’

  He turned at the sound of Edie’s voice, brought out of his musings about his evening in Sydney. Disappointment still swamped him. Edie had obviously had an affair with Buchanan. He couldn’t deny it. It hurt.

  ‘Yeah?’

  She came around the partition, walking fast and holding herself tightly. ‘I forgot to tell you. I need a gun.’

  ‘Is that wise?’ he asked, with a lift of his brow. If anyone gave her a gun for real, she’d shoot her foot off. Or she’d shoot him while aiming for her foot.

  ‘Can we use one of yours? Didn’t the army issue you with guns?’

  ‘Yes, but I had to give them back.’

  She paused, and blinked—and nearly smiled at her own silliness. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘It’s okay.’ For a second it was as though they were back to where they’d been before yesterday. No Buchanan and an affair between them.

  ‘I’ll call my arms expert,’ he said. ‘She’s highly trained in locating plastic weapons.’ He’d ask Gem to find him a toy one from an overseas distributor.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said quietly. ‘What time are you going into town this afternoon? I’d like to catch Ted between his rounds.’

  ‘Anytime you say.’

  ‘Two?’

  ‘Suits me.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘You don’t have to thank me all the time.’

  ‘I’m trying to be polite. I’m aware of how annoying it must be to have to do everything for me.’

  So much for getting the friendship back. ‘Edie—’

  ‘I’m not like this in the city. It’s the country. It’s so damned hard to get anywhere, or get something.’

  ‘What do you need? Besides the gun.’

  ‘The sound and lighting board!’ she said, flinging out a hand towards the other side of the stage area. ‘Who am I going to get to do sound and lighting? This was such a dumb idea!’

  ‘The play?’ he asked, noticing how flustered she’d become.

  ‘Ever
ything!’

  ‘I thought you were going to ask the twins to do the board.’

  ‘But who’s going to teach them? I only have the basic idea of how to work it.’

  ‘I’ll teach them.’

  ‘How?’ she demanded, eyes still wide and looking a bit shiny. Christ, she was going to cry.

  ‘Edie, I’m proficient in handling over forty weapons and systems. I’m sure I can handle the sound and lighting board.’

  ‘See?’ she said. ‘You can do all that and I can do nothing.’

  ‘That’s not true. I’ll sort it out.’

  ‘I don’t want you to sort it out.’

  ‘Edie—’

  ‘You don’t understand! Nothing’s working. Everything is so much easier in the city. I can look after myself in a city. Always!’ She spun around. ‘I’ll go call Gemma and ask if the twins would like to work the board.’

  Ryan turned away, despondency settling inside him. First she’s annoyed with him and now she’s annoyed about being stuck in the country. A situation, he might have added, she got into all by herself due to sleeping with a married man who was much better at being nasty and vindictive than Edie could ever be.

  He picked up a jacket, boots and some other clothing still lying around the barn bedroom, and packed it into his backpack, folding and rolling neatly out of habit—shouldering around 90 pounds of gear daily and packing it correctly required some skill—while trying to vent his disappointment in knowing that Edie had been with Buchanan in a way he didn’t want her to have been.

  Is that why she’d given him the hug last night? Was she upset about Buchanan giving her the push, which he presumed is what had happened and was why she’d written him into her play. He hadn’t taken Edie for the type who’d go out with a married man but she’d been in his hotel room for Christ’s sake.

  Except that when she’d said she was hard on herself and lonely, a jolt of awareness had shot through him. As though she’d been speaking truthfully, and that she did feel unsettled, and that maybe, just maybe, the real Edie had come home.

  She’d practically been in his arms last night and he’d taken so long wondering what was going on with her that he hadn’t even given her a reciprocal hug.

  He still felt the warm pressure of her arms around his waist, her hands flat on his lower back. But what had that hug meant? Or was he reading more into it than necessary simply because he wanted to discover that it was more than a hug?

  She had a problem, and it wasn’t just Buchanan, it was an emotional tip of some sort that had got hold of her and created this agitation. Up until now she’d been actively over-worried about her family, and about Viv in particular, but was that a cover-up for something going on inside her? How could she think she was being tough on herself? Unless she was feeling bad about having had an affair with a married man.

  He let out a sigh, dropped the backpack and picked up the PTSD and trauma recovery brochures he’d collected. He had been poring over them. He’d stayed with an ex-2 Commando mate, Cameron, when he came out of the army, looking for properties in New South Wales that might work for the retreat. Until Gem told him Edie was home. He’d packed up and headed straight down here and what good had that done? Time to get tough on himself and his own emotions.

  He flicked through the brochures.

  Swallow’s Fall was the perfect away-from-it-all place for the children of his fellow Australian forces personnel who’d been through hell. He wanted to build confidence in the kids and help them through the other side of their parents’ trauma and show them that life could be better again. He might be able to do good for any of the family members left behind. If Dad or Mum had died, in a conflict or had taken their own lives, where did that leave the kids and the wives and husbands who were left?

  He threw the brochures onto the bed, not caring that a few fell onto the floor. He wanted to do something, no matter how small. Offering a rural getaway was how he thought he might be able to help. A place to come to for a week away from the nightmare of living every day without Mum, Dad, wife or husband. A week of freedom from their thoughts. A retreat somewhere quiet where the birds and the sky and the sigh of a breeze replaced the sensory memories of goodbyes, hospital rooms and counsellors.

  A place of peace. Hiking, fishing, cycling, horse riding, barbecues after a long day soaking up the countryside and breathing fresh air. It could be the last place in their journey of recovery before they hit the world again. A place they could come to anytime in the following years, if they wanted to or needed to. A place where they could breathe easier after having moved through whatever trauma they’d been dealing with. Not the end, by any means. But a pit stop between what had been and what was ahead. Or even a pit stop whenever they needed to refuel, re-energise, get back to nature or get away from their regular lives.

  It would have to be not-for-profit too, or he’d have to get financial assistance somehow so that it was affordable for those people who’d come and stay.

  He wasn’t worried about the house. He’d buy one—or at least put down a healthy deposit. When he turned thirty he’d come into his inheritance from his Aunt Gert who’d died years ago. He had fifty grand, plus another hundred saved over the last sixteen years. Plus his pension. He could live on a small income, that didn’t worry him. He’d need staff unless he kept the retreat small, maybe only four guests at a time. Perhaps he could get a grant from the government, if he could prove the project’s worth.

  He glanced at the glossy brochures. His plan wasn’t even halfway formed, but it kept calling to him. Something in his head said, Keep looking for ways to get this done. But could he stay here, make a place for himself, and watch Edie blowing in and out every now and again?

  He wanted a safe haven. He wanted it for himself, too, if he were truthful. He just wanted to do what he wanted to do, and have Edie with him, at his side. Encouraging him, telling him he was doing good.

  People thought small-town people were equally small of mind, but Ryan knew that wasn’t true. It’s why he loved Swallow’s Fall. Small-town dwellers were as smart as any city slicker and could recognise real-life issues just as much as someone working for a big city corporation. They just didn’t expect so much. They were mostly happy with what they had. That’s where love came from.

  This is what Edie had forgotten. It wasn’t that she didn’t care, but her life was a whirlwind of excitement. How in God’s name could he expect her to settle down here, in Swallow’s Fall, with him?

  10

  Waiting in the Wings

  Edie felt bad about giving Ryan the cold shoulder. She felt bad about her tantrum too, but everything was going wrong and she’d succumbed to feeling sorry for herself.

  Ryan moved, changing gear as he slowed for the curve in the road just outside of town, and she got a heady whiff of his lime-scented soap.

  They’d hardly spoken for the last two days. She’d got on with her plans and Ryan had built all her stage frames. She had to get their friendship back on track and fix the strained atmosphere between them. But it wasn’t all her fault—he’d told Ted to be offhand with her, and had told Gary she was gay. That produced a wan smile. Gary must have been devastated. It was a kind way out for him actually because now he could get over his attraction to Edie without feeling rejected.

  She snuck a glance at Ryan, who was focused on the road ahead, and decided she’d try to ease the tension between them.

  ‘Magdalena is hugely excited about playing the penniless opera singer,’ she said. Edie had spoken to Magdalena on the telephone and she’d been thrilled to bits to be offered the part. She said she was going to hound Ryan and ask him to be her personal trainer, since she was apparently working hard to get her waistline back. At least that was some payback. It almost made Edie smile again. ‘When she heard that Ted was the dead body, I swear she was nearly apoplectic. She really wants that waistline.’ She threw a glance at Ryan but his features were set. He definitely didn’t look amenable to easing the atmosphere
but Edie pressed on. ‘It looks like I’ll have to ask Ted to play the detective after all.’ She paused. ‘Josh is still saying he won’t take the part of the groom.’ No answer. ‘So I was wondering—’

  ‘No.’

  He said it softly but she could read beneath that quiet determination. She spun on her seat to face him. He had spoken, so this was her chance. ‘Oh, come on, Ryan. Please.’

  ‘I’m not going to be in your play, Edie. That’s final.’ He looked her way and gave her a warning frown.

  She faced forwards again and sighed. ‘By the way, I’m having another night out at Kookaburra’s one evening this week with Mum and my friends. And I’m going to ask Dad if he’ll run me into Cooma to buy a car.’

  ‘You don’t need a car.’ He slowed and changed gear when they entered Main Street.

  ‘I’m buying a car.’ That was final—but she didn’t say so because at least they were talking again.

  It was tiring, all this arguing. Even the mental arguing when they didn’t speak, they were still arguing. Why on earth didn’t he want her to buy a car?

  Edie got out of the four-wheel drive and slammed the door, earning her a sharp glance from her driver, which she ignored as she peered down Main Street, going through her list of needs in her head.

  Mrs Tam was coming out of the boutique grocery store run by Ted’s twin daughters and their husbands. You could buy all sorts of savoury delights from the delicatessen shelves and just about anything sweetly delicious too. It was likely the main reason for Magdalena’s waistline expansion over the year she’d been here. That and the ice-cream she bought off Ted three times a day.

  She would ask Ted to play the detective, but first she had to cast the simpleton groom—and there was Josh, leaving the toy shop.

  ‘Just going to have a word with Josh,’ she said to Ryan, then strode across the street, smiling and waving.

  Josh paused and rested his hands on the walkway railing. ‘What now?’ he asked as she reached the steps, still smiling enticingly.

  ‘Josh. About the horse—’