by Jennie Jones
‘I’ve always loved you, but now I’m in love with you. I have been since I was nineteen but these last few weeks I’ve fallen in love with you all over again and in a much deeper way. A much deeper way …’ He was staring at her, eyes still dark. ‘I asked for time out because I didn’t want to hurt you if I suddenly realised the theatre meant more to me than anything.’ She took a breath when he still didn’t respond. ‘But the only time I’m real is when I’m with you.’
‘Did you just say you’re in love with me?’
He said it as though incredulous.
She nodded, her head spinning. ‘I’m not taking the part. I refused it before we had our opening night—our first opening night—and I don’t want you to go,’ she said, her voice stifled by a catch in her throat.
‘I don’t want to go.’
‘So can we work it out?’
He looked out on Main Street like he was about to make a judgement on something he’d never expected to happen. ‘If you’ll have me, Edie, you ought to know I’ll always be looking out for you. I’ll always want to protect you. I’ll probably insist on driving wherever we go too. And if some bastard hurts you again, I’ll likely kill him.’
She found a smile, but he didn’t see it because he was still frowning at the street. She doubted he’d kill anyone, although she did feel a tremor of delight, as though the earth had moved under her feet, at the thought of him protecting her.
She moistened her lips with her tongue. He’d said his piece, now she had to tell him what she could offer him. It was only fair.
‘I’d like us to have the retreat at Jindalee House. I’d also like to keep the theatre.’
‘I’d never take anything away from you,’ he interrupted, shooting her a studied glance.
She smiled, and this time he saw it and his frown lessened.
Edie swallowed. ‘I’m not going back to the city. I want to stay here. With you. I was thinking—if I helped you with the retreat, I could write plays if I wasn’t out hiking with you. I don’t think I remember how to make a fire or put the tent up though. You’d have to teach me so much.’
‘You’d remember. After I showed you.’
‘I don’t want to be useless.’
‘You’re not.’
‘But I have no experience with camping anymore—and I love my red car so if it’s okay with you, I will probably insist on driving myself quite often.’ She thought she ought to get that in.
‘There’s no need to worry about the camping stuff. I told you before, you’re an entertainer. That’s your gift.’
‘I am?’ She was—but he’d said it and it made it more important.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘You damn well are. I won’t let you forget it.’
She paused, reflective. He was inspiring her!
Gosh, she had to swallow again.
‘Anyway,’ she carried on, ‘in winter, when we didn’t have so many families at the retreat, I could put on plays, and maybe even some Shakespeare.’
‘You could do that all year, if you wanted to.’
He looked just a little bit more interested now.
‘I could. I’d like that.’
‘I wouldn’t stop you.’
She already knew that. ‘Something wonderful has happened, Ryan—besides you coming back, which is better than anything—the ABC want to do a three-part drama series about a small country town and all the goings-on. They want me to be co-screenwriter, and they want to film it here, in Swallow’s Fall.’ It was thrilling on so many levels, but the highest was that it meant she’d have an income while living with Ryan. There was no way she wanted to rely on his income alone. ‘They’re going to pay me a lot of money.’ She named the price and he lifted an eyebrow. ‘I need to negotiate a few things though, and I won’t accept the offer until I’ve told Ted about it and he gathers the committee for a pow-wow.’
‘You’ll listen to what Ted and the committee say?’
‘Of course I will! I plan to ask Ted if I can join the committee.’
He drew his brow. ‘That could take up to two years to negotiate.’
She agreed with a nod. ‘I’ll have plenty to occupy me until they let me take a seat on the committee.’ Like kissing him and looking at him and holding him and … ‘I’ve got an idea for another play.’
‘Oh?’
‘It’s about an ex-actress who comes back to her hometown and meets the man she fell in love with years ago. But he left her because he had to go to the jungle to rescue his sister who’s been kidnapped by a bunch of Amazonian fortune tellers.’ Was that a shadow of a smile? ‘The problem is, the ex-actress has amnesia and has forgotten what the leading man always meant to her.’
His eyes got all glowy and her knees almost buckled. He was so steady and she was too emotional. Especially when she was around him—and she was dying to get her hands on him.
‘Does she remember what he meant to her?’ he asked.
‘Yes. I might even make it a musical. There’s always a happy ending in a musical.’
‘Is there a gun in this play?’
‘Absolutely no guns. No murders.’
‘How’s it going to end?’ he said, seemingly still interested, even though she’d been gabbling on and on.
‘Well … the heroic, handsome leading man with an amazing physique has been looking for her everywhere, and unbeknownst to the ex-actress with amnesia, he—’
He cut her off by pulling her into him.
Her breath caught as his arms came around her and they stared into each other’s eyes.
The lamplight above them shed a golden hue on the top of his head and his features were soft and his eyes filled with the shiny glow she’d missed so much.
‘I love you, Edie,’ he said quietly.
‘Then for God’s sake hurry up and kiss me.’
He smiled. Torturous man! He bent his head, then paused, and she couldn’t help but smile back at him. She’d communicated and he’d inspired. They were beneath their lamppost and there was no ice.
She kissed him like she’d been in a drought. It was her heart that kept her from slipping to the walkway floor. It was buoyed with happiness. And anyway, there was no chance of her falling because her man had his arms around her and she was crushed against his chest.
Edie opened her eyes when the kiss ended to find Ryan’s dark brown gaze on her.
‘I never let you go,’ he said. ‘On all those tours to Afghanistan, you came with me. In my mind and in my heart. I took you everywhere.’
Oh, lord. How could so much good happen to one lonely woman?
‘You were my talisman, Edie. You reminded me of everything safe. Of everything I loved.’
‘I kept you with me too. You were always in my thoughts, and the second before I stepped onto the stage for the first time—every night, even on matinees—you came into my head. As soon as I knew you were there, I walked onstage.’
‘Christ,’ he said, as though stunned. ‘All this time …’
‘You’re the only breath I want to take, Ryan.’
His eyes softened. ‘Do you love me like that? Because that’s how I feel about you.’
She nodded. ‘I need you and I need to be with you, and you are simply my all.’
‘Then that’s what we have in common.’ He kissed her, pressing his mouth on hers as his arms pulled her against him even more firmly. ‘We love each other, Edie. It’s not a state, it’s fact. We’re just the same after all.’
She smiled. After all the angst of not understanding each other it was so ridiculous to finally recognise that they’d simply been speaking a different script. ‘We’ve got a long way to go before we finally get on the same wavelength though. Is that okay with you?’
‘You love me. I don’t care about the rest. We’ll work it out.’
They loved. She loved. He loved. The rest was waiting in the wings but the script had a fantastic opportunity to blossom. The soldier and the actress. Ryan and Edie. With a home in Swallow’s Fall.
&nbs
p; ‘We’re so different, Ryan. Why did we choose each other?’
‘I didn’t choose you. You happened.’
‘Does that mean you wouldn’t have chosen me if you’d had the chance?’
‘Edie. I didn’t have a choice. You happened. I fell in love with you. That’s fine by me.’
She’d spent a decade in the spotlight and a fortnight in the headlines, but being so close to the man who had his arms around her and who was looking at her so intently and with love, gave her the biggest thrill she’d ever had.
Music and party noise suddenly filled the air around them, as though they’d been in a vacuum for the last ten minutes. They both glanced at Kookaburra’s.
‘There’s nobody at the windows,’ Edie said. ‘I thought they’d all be looking out at us.’ Like the last time she’d been beneath the lamppost with him.
‘It’s our moment,’ he murmured, bringing her focus back to him. ‘And so far, I haven’t fallen over.’
His smile was so beautiful that her eyes stung.
‘Don’t,’ he said.
‘It’s relieved tears.’
She thanked the universe he hadn’t been taken from this world when so many of his comrades had been. ‘You fill my heart,’ she told him. ‘I love you as big as the moon.’ Which was high in the darkened sky, above the lamppost, above the sparkling lights on the claret ash trees, and above the rooftops of their town.
‘Are you scared?’ he asked.
‘Only a little. Are you?’
His smile was tender. ‘If you say you’ll give it a go, I’ll be brave with you.’
She wrapped her arms around his waist and gazed up at him as he draped his arms around her, holding her close. ‘I love my life with you already,’ she told him, emotion clogging her throat.
‘It’s only just begun,’ he said.
But there was moonlight, no ice, and love was holding them close, beneath their lamppost on Main Street.
‘That’s the best part,’ she said, her smile wide and her heart soaring. ‘It’s only just begun.’
Acknowledgements
There is a lot of me in this story. It was fascinating to write those elements and it gave me so many fond memories that I want to thank every single actor I’ve worked with. Those from the amateur dramatic societies and youth theatres when I entered the business at the age of thirteen. Those from the three years of drama school in London, and those I worked with professionally over the next fifteen years or so, both in the UK and here in Australia.
I’m not Edie, though (I don’t look like Rita Hayworth for a start), but what Edie feels in The House on Jindalee Lane about her career in the theatre, its people, its buzz, its ups and downs, I felt.
Being a professional actor isn’t a job, it’s a way of life. It’s the very breath we need to live each day no matter how hard the biz is, and it is hard. But we always thought ourselves fortunate because we were doing what we loved doing and lived to do.
Now I’m blessed again because I’ve found the next love of my life: writing fiction. Every part Edie has played, I played. Every memory Edie has of being an actor in rehearsal, backstage or onstage, or caring about and working with her thespian friends, I had—including a long scene with a dead body up-centre stage, and including a long scene where my co-actor ‘dried’ halfway through the scene and I was no use to him because I got lost too. We got the fright of our lives.
I wasn’t a well-known theatre actor like Edie is in the book, I was a ‘jobbing’ actor. That means I worked the repertory system, touring or in situ in some of the loveliest old theatres and regions in the UK. Edie, of course, has done all this here, in Australia’s grand theatres. For Edie, it’s ‘chookas’ before going on stage, not ‘break a leg’ like it was for me, but the sentiment is the same: wishing each other and the run of the play the best, without saying good you-know-what because that’s bad luck!
I thoroughly enjoyed writing the parts in the story where Edie is rehearsing her amateur cast and revelling in the dazzling moments a life in the theatre can give us. The superstitions and the camaraderie; the usually cold and impersonal rehearsal rooms with make-do props and costume bits—with no time or nowhere close to nip out and get a decent cup of coffee. The adrenaline when we get to the tech and dress rehearsals on the actual stage where it all starts to gel, and the charge that shoots through our systems ten seconds before our cue to walk onstage in character. It’s magic!
Since I was first published I was often asked, and wondered myself, why I hadn’t written a story about an actor and the theatre. But nothing sparked for me until The House on Jindalee Lane. Swallow’s Fall and its delightful characters were perfect for the warmth and humour I love to write about, so at last, I’ve written a story about an actor.
To an actor, there is nothing like the smell of a theatre. But no matter what we do for a living, there often comes a time in our lives when we need to change gear, and let go of what we once loved doing, because life is pulling us in a different direction. I did this. I have no regrets.
To a writer, there is nothing like the smell of a bookshop. But writing the book is only part of the journey, although undoubtedly the longest and hardest part. After it’s written it’s handed over to professionals for evaluation and feedback. This is not as scary as it sounds because you are given the chance to see it from a different and expert viewpoint, and then you are given the chance to put your heart and soul into your story all over again, and better it.
To those who have had a large and instructive hand in the publication of The House on Jindalee Lane, I can’t thank you enough.
Sue Brockhoff, Publishing Director, Harlequin (Australia). Not only are you an expert in our industry, you are a pleasure to work with and you are considerate and thoughtful whenever I approach you with a new book plan or a question, which is a priceless blessing. Thank you.
Kate Cuthbert, Managing Editor, Escape Publishing. Did you think there’d be a Swallow’s Fall series, let alone a sixth book, after you accepted The House on Burra Burra Lane? Neither did I … but maybe you had a plan!
Julia Knapman, Editor, Harlequin (Australia). You have always been so caring and energising to work with and once again your help, editing feedback and support has been incredible. I learn from you and I love working with you.
Rachael Donovan, Commissioning Editor, Harlequin (Australia). We have only recently come together as author and editor and yet your input and support on this book has been one hundred per cent effective. I am so looking forward to working with you more in the future.
Bernadette Foley, I was tremendously excited when I learned you were going to be my editor. You sorted out the best from the weak and by doing that, you charged me to think more acutely about what I’d written and how I’d written it. Thank you.
I also want to thank authors and friends Catherine, Juanita and Lily for their help in sorting out the various bits and pieces of this book that I sent them.
This is the longest acknowledgement I’ve written to date, but forgive me the words. I loved being taken back to that time in my life when I was a very dramatic, poor yet happy theatre actor, and although I was a jobbing actor, I’m very proud of what I did and even prouder to have known so many extraordinary, engaging and charismatic professional actors, dancers, singers, directors, writers, musical directors, choreographers and backstage crew and stage managers. Many of whom are still doing the job in the biz. You made my world in the same way my writer friends, editors and publishers now make my world.
I loved that job. I love this job. I have been a very lucky lady.
Turn over for a sneak peek.
A PLACE
TO
Stay
by
JENNIE JONES
OUT NOW
harlequinbooks.com.au
One
Rachel Meade pulled the comb from the back of her head, threw it into the bag on the passenger seat and ran a finger under the collar of her blouse. She undid the top three bu
ttons and attempted to let the caution that shadowed her life slip away. Hot air rushed through the open windows of her old 4WD, whipping her hair across the frames of her sunglasses as Bono singing I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For came full blast from the radio.
It was good to see the end of this day but the trouble she’d been involved in forty minutes ago had shifted from a concern to a worry that wouldn’t budge. Would there be charges? Would they ask her to give a statement against those men? She didn’t want her name on anything official.
She fidgeted on the seat, suddenly desperate to discard the formal white blouse and black skirt she wore to work every day at the town hall in Mt Maria on the Western Australian edge of the Great Victoria Desert.
She didn’t know how this little town had survived the century since its beginning in the gold rush days, but she was grateful it existed. She felt a tug of appreciation for Mt Maria and its people. Well, some of them. Not the mine site workers who had swarmed into town a fortnight ago, causing trouble that started long before closing time at the hotel.
She stared at the road ahead—straight, wide, and empty—calming herself with the vista. The landscape was theatrical in its majestic, golden barrenness: vast blue sky creased the faraway horizon, with rich red earth, mulga woodlands and spinifex grass below. Ten more minutes and she’d be at the Laurensen place—the rental house she’d begun to think of as her own after years of moving away, moving on, moving anywhere. Mt Maria offered a truly outback lifestyle, the brochure had told her. And it was out the back of beyond. Which is why she’d moved here.
She hadn’t been looking for anything except normality and a sense of safety. If she was lucky, she’d found both. If she stayed in this rangeland district long enough, the Laurensen place might even become known as the Meade place.
It sounded good, but she didn’t want to give the idea too much consideration, regardless of already having savoured the notion a few times too many.
Five fifteen and it was still as sweltering as it had been earlier that morning when she’d driven to work. At a hundred kilometres an hour, the air coursing through the car was like a blast from a heater on full power. The aircon hadn’t worked from the day she’d bought the vehicle, and there was nowhere to get it re-gassed out here, so she put up with it and enjoyed the exhilaration of air rushing over her.