About the Book
Emily Woods counts cracks for a living. Concrete cracks. So when her longterm boyfriend dumps her, she decides it’s time for a change of scenery. Her best friend, Will, suggests joining his construction team in Queensland. Working next door to the Great Barrier Reef seems like just the sort of adventure she needs to reboot her life . . . until she realises that Will is not the person she thought he was.
Charlotte Templeton is frustrated with the lack of respect FIFO workers have for her seaside resort. But picking a fight with their tyrannical project manager, Mark Crawford, seems to lead to more complications than resolutions. The man is too pompous, too rude, and too damned good looking.
As both women strive to protect their dreams and achieve their goals, they discover that secrets will come out, loyalty often hurts, and sometimes the perfect man is the wrong one.
Contents
Cover
About the Book
Title
Dedication
Chapter 01: Emily
Chapter 02: Will
Chapter 03: Charlotte
Chapter 04: Mark
Chapter 05: Mark
Chapter 06: Emily
Chapter 07: Will
Chapter 08: Emily
Chapter 09: Charlotte
Chapter 10: Mark
Chapter 11: Charlotte
Chapter 12: Mark
Chapter 13: Emily
Chapter 14: Will
Chapter 15: Emily
Chapter 16: Charlotte
Chapter 17: Mark
Chapter 18: Charlotte
Chapter 19: Will
Chapter 20: Emily
Chapter 21: Mark
Chapter 22: Charlotte
Chapter 23: Emily
Chapter 24: Will
Chapter 25: Mark
Chapter 26: Emily
Chapter 27: Will
Chapter 28: Charlotte
Chapter 29: Mark
Chapter 30: Charlotte
Chapter 31: Will
Chapter 32: Emily
Chapter 33: Mark
Chapter 34: Emily
Two weeks later
Acknowledgements
Author’s Note
Extract from OPERATION VALENTINE
About the Author
Copyright Notice
Loved the Book?
For Mum and Dad,
Your enduring love and faith in me has
always been my biggest blessing.
Thank you so much for all that you are.
The head bridesmaid, a brunette in a long blue gown, rose from her chair and walked unsteadily to the dais with the studied clumsiness of someone who was completely wasted but trying very hard not to show it. After leaning on the lectern a few seconds too long, she unfolded a rather worn-looking piece of paper and placed it in front of her.
‘Good evening, everyone,’ she hiccupped. ‘I’m Robyn Churchill, Lena’s best friend. I’ve known Lena,’ she squinted at the piece of paper, ‘for f-fifteen years and – oh to hell with it.’ She tossed the piece of paper aside and lifted one purposeful finger before slurring, ‘The truth is, when Lena told me she was off to the Pilbara to be a proper engineer, I never thought she’d come back engaged. Never. Sunburned maybe . . . but planning a wedding? Ha! The thought never even crossed my mind.’ She teetered a little and had to grab hold of the lectern. ‘But you know, when I think about it now, I really should have seen it coming.’ She patted her hair; the cream-coloured flower she was wearing now hung precariously from one bobby pin. ‘After that day he spotted her swimming in her red bra and matching knickers, it was blatantly obvious that Lena was going to attract his attention.’
The bride, sitting three seats to the left of the podium, in a strapless satin gown with a crystal-studded bodice, covered her mouth with both hands and looked down at her plate.
‘Good Lord.’ Julia, who was sitting next to Emily at table number seven, leaned discreetly sideways so that she could murmur out the side of her mouth. ‘There’s one at every wedding, isn’t there?’
Emily’s mouth twisted wistfully as she studied Lena. While her old uni friend had appeared momentarily embarrassed, she was now looking across at Robyn with a sort of helpless affection. It was the kind of expression worn by a person whose cup of happiness was so full nothing could be said or done to empty it.
And with just cause.
Her new husband looked gorgeous. The groom was dressed in a smart black tux – its very cut a stark tribute to his masculinity. He cast his glowing bride a look so potent it made Emily’s heart ache.
Is it wrong for me to feel resentful?
In their group of friends, Lena was never supposed to be the first one to get married. For starters, she’d only been dating Dan for a few months before he’d popped the question, and in the Pilbara of all places. Wasn’t that like the most unromantic place on the planet?
Emily, on the other hand, had been in a committed relationship for five years. They’d owned a house together. They had a dog, for goodness’ sake. His mum called her to find out what he wanted for his birthday. If anyone had been well and truly on the road to a happily ever after, it was her. Her fingers tightened around the stem of her wine glass.
How wrong were you?
In Trent’s mind, it had clearly been a different story. Instead of the pulp-fiction ending she’d dreamed of, he’d gone with a very literary alternative.
Tragic symbolism.
The tragedy she got. What it symbolised she had yet to decipher.
Lifting her wine glass, she took a soothing sip. She had promised herself not to wallow in her misery tonight: there was too much to enjoy. A reunion with her engineering buddies, for a start. There were eight of them. Three girls – Lena, Julia and herself – and five guys, one of whom was her best friend, Will. She could still remember late nights spent in the Reid Library with this crew trying to finish a Structural Analysis assignment or, worse, a Mathematics one. They’d take it in turns to do the coffee run to the café downstairs. Then, of course, there were the toga parties and the quiz nights, the early-morning dancing at some club in Northbridge. If they were honest, they hadn’t got through engineering individually but collectively. Each had needed the others to be responsible when he or she failed to be. They shared information, assignment answers and hangovers alike.
Graduating and entering the workforce had been a sobering period during which they all realised it was time to stand on their own feet. Now, if they were lucky, they caught up once a month instead of every day. In fact, if Lena hadn’t decided to get married that Saturday, Emily doubted they would be catching up at all.
No, that’s not completely true.
She would have made time for Will. Now that he worked in Queensland, she only got to see him every four or five weeks when he flew back to Perth to take his R and R. While they did text and email a lot, she missed having her best friend in town.
Smiling, she turned to the subject of her thoughts, who was sitting on her right. ‘Now, when I ask you to be my maid of honour, you need to promise me to stay sober until after the speeches.’
Will returned her smile but shook his head. ‘There is no way, this side of hell, that I’m being your maid of honour.’
She raised her eyebrows. ‘Why not?’
He gave her a long look. Will might be her best friend but he invariably refused to do anything girly. No facials. No chick flicks. And no shopping together – though he had made a binding exception to that rule in the case of them needing something like a top-secret computer microchip available only from the Japanese black market. ‘And then I’d expect you to be my Bond girl,’ he insisted.
This was pre
tty funny, considering Will looked nothing like James Bond, though Emily suspected he would secretly like to. With longish brown hair, a short beard and black-rimmed specs, he was a lovable nerd who hadn’t changed one iota since the day she’d met him, an eager seventeen-year-old with a passion for science similar to hers.
She couldn’t help but notice that he still hadn’t answered her question.
‘Well?’ she pressed him.
He was silent and for a moment she thought his expression was serious. Would he really not stand up for her at her wedding? She knew it was a little corny, but she’d do it for him. Then his expression cut to a jovial one: ‘I think Trent would want me to be his best man. And, to be honest, I think I’d much rather be a best man than a maid of honour. No offence.’
She froze. He doesn’t know.
She was so sure he’d been avoiding the subject till they had a private moment to talk. Why hadn’t Trent told him?
‘What’s the matter?’
As she looked up to meet his eyes, she realised she couldn’t blame Trent. She hadn’t told anyone yet either. Telling people about her break-up made it real.
‘Will, the truth is –’
But Robyn was now calling for everyone’s attention. ‘I’ll need you all to charge your glasses!’
The moment to speak was lost as Julia passed her a bottle of white. At the front of the room, Robyn leaned over and plucked her own champagne glass from a table beside the podium, looked at it and then set it down again. ‘I’m going to need some more grog in that,’ she said to the bridesmaid called Sharon. A chuckle rippled through the crowd as Sharon complied.
Robyn raised her now full glass and rocked on the balls of her feet as she surveyed the crowd. ‘There is no doubt in my mind: Dan and Lena make an exceptional couple. So in love, it makes you ssss-sick.’ She looked down momentarily and with studied resolve clutched her stomach. A few seconds passed. Emily and the rest of the room held their breath.
But with a valiant smile Robyn looked up again, waving a hand in reassurance. ‘What I’m trying to say is, there is no couple better suited or matched than these two. They are the ying and the yang, the head and the tail, the . . . well . . . you get the point. I just wish we could all be as lucky. Soooooo,’ she lifted her glass unsteadily, ‘I want to propose a toast.’
Emily and the rest of room posed at the ready.
‘To red underwear.’ Robyn thrust her glass in the air. ‘May we all find a set!’
‘To red underwear!’ The wedding guests laughed and everyone drank.
As Lena got up to embrace her friend lovingly, everyone else returned to dinner and conversation.
Julia leaned on the table and said, ‘How embarrassing. I thought her speech would never end. Where did Lena meet that girl anyway?’
‘I don’t know.’ Emily shrugged. ‘I don’t remember her from uni.’
‘That’s because she didn’t go to our uni,’ Will informed them both. ‘Lena met Robyn in high school.’
Emily rolled her eyes. ‘Of course Will remembers.’
Will never forgot anyone or anything: he had a photographic memory. He remembered everything he read and had probably been the smartest guy in their study group. His honours were so first class they had wanted him to extend his thesis and apply for a PhD. He did so and was granted it.
‘Well, I don’t recall her.’ Julia examined her fingernails. ‘I have enough trouble keeping track of you lot.’ She glanced across the table. ‘So, where are you guys working now? Jake?’
‘CPG,’ Jake responded. He was a stocky guy with a streak of red through his dark brown hair. ‘Just started.’
‘Oil and gas,’ Julia murmured. ‘Not bad. I don’t suppose you’ve had to sail to an offshore platform yet?’
Jake cracked his knuckles. ‘I’m working on it.’
‘And what about you, Caleb?’
Julia proceeded to go round the group and interrogate everyone on their current positions. She was very competitive and was always trying to compare their successes, particularly in a manner that elevated her own.
Julia believed, of course, that the footbridge she was working on was the most high profile. And maybe, in a way, it was, because it was going to be located in Perth’s Kings Park. Therefore, it would automatically be heritage listed, built to last a hundred and fifty years and no doubt have some sort of cultural significance written on a plaque and placed beside it. But as far as Emily was concerned, Will had the best gig. Like Lena, he also worked for Barnes Inc, the biggest engineering company in the state. However, he was on a different project at a different location. And what a location it was!
The Whitsunday Islands.
The Great Barrier Reef.
Living in a resort.
And best of all, being part of the expansion of what was already the largest coal export facility in the Southern Hemisphere. Hay Point Wharf – she’d sell her right arm to see it.
But she didn’t begrudge Will his success. It wasn’t his fault he was super-smart and easy to work with. He deserved to be there.
Emily reached over and took a gulp of her wine, dreading Julia getting around the table and back to her. There was no doubt she was going to as she systematically made everyone give a breakdown of the projects they were working on. The moment came all too soon.
‘Emily, are you still with Johns, Anstey & Carlton?’
Emily looked into her glass, studying the translucent liquid and wishing it were just a touch more potent. ‘Yeah,’ she mumbled and took a gulp.
‘What do they have you doing?’
‘Oh, you know, nothing worth mentioning.’
‘Now you’ve tickled my curiosity.’
‘Really, it’s not that exciting.’ She looked around, hoping for a waiter to show up or the band to start playing. Seriously, these people never did their jobs conveniently. ‘I wonder when dessert’s coming.’
Julia’s eyes widened. ‘Are you still doing that dilapidation survey?’
Crap. She’d forgotten she’d had a bit of a whinge to Julia about it over coffee four months earlier.
‘Yes. There’s a lot of buildings involved.’ Emily wound her napkin into a tight rope and then looked up brightly, hell bent on a subject change. ‘Has anyone spoken to Sharon, the other bridesmaid? She looks like an interesting girl. That husband of hers is so funny. Carl, isn’t it?’
‘Hang on a minute.’ Jake exchanged a look with Caleb. ‘So what’s a dilapidation survey? What does that involve?’
Emily had been counting on the ignorance of graduates only two years out of uni. The last thing she wanted to do was enlighten them.
‘It’s actually a really important step in the pre-construction process, especially in high-profile areas like the city,’ Will put in. She cast him a grateful look that was short-lived.
‘But boring as hell,’ Julia scoffed. ‘I’m surprised she hasn’t shot herself in the head yet.’
Trust Julia to elaborate. Oblivious to Emily’s mortification, her ex-study-buddy turned to the rest of the group. ‘You know how they’re putting in that second tunnel under the city? Well, Emily here has to go check out all the buildings that will be sitting over the top of it.’
‘Check out?’ Jake repeated.
‘She has to examine every room, floor and wall in every building and take a record of the cracks present in the structure so that her company has a snapshot of what they were like before construction. So when construction starts and the lawsuits start coming through, they can say, “No, sorry, those cracks were already there and not caused by us.” ’
The truth dawned on Caleb, a sandy-haired guy with freckles to match. ‘Let me get this straight: you’re counting cracks?’
Emily winced. ‘In a manner of speaking.’
‘That must give you the shits.’
The rest of the table burst out laughing at his unfortunate play on words.
Emily wanted to crawl under the table and die. ‘I’m not just counting th
em precisely; I have to look at dents and water damage too.’
But nobody was really listening, except Will. ‘We’ve really got to find a way to get your boss to give you something else. It’s been way too long.’
She nodded. Thankfully, a few seconds later the table conversation moved on to something less close to the bone than her floundering career and Emily could concentrate on the after-effects of being the laughing stock of her peer group. The worst thing was she had stayed in that job for the benefit of her relationship. The company seemed to focus on Perth-based projects and she hadn’t wanted to leave Trent to work out of town, especially when she thought he was on the verge of proposing. In her mind, she had been about to settle down, maybe even go part-time when they decided to have a family. What a joke!
She had sacrificed her career development for the man she thought was the love of her life. And he’d dumped her. How could she have read the signs so wrong? Her embarrassment about her career was only compounded by her poor judgement about Trent. Somehow she didn’t feel like making the announcement that they were no longer together now. When she’d first arrived at the wedding, her friends had all remarked on his absence but she’d simply told them he was working late. Which, let’s face it, was perfectly believable. As a lawyer, Trent worked horrendous hours and they were used to him only turning up sporadically to social functions. So there was no rush to set them all straight. She had a bit of time before the truth had to come out.
On the pretext of wanting to wish the bride and groom luck, she left their table shortly after the main meal. Luckily, she didn’t have to follow through with her cover because the blushing bride and her handsome husband had been waylaid by one of those elderly relations no one has ever heard of but who always seem to resurface at weddings. Aunt Betty had Dan by the cheek and was saying, ‘Well, I never thought I’d see the day.’
Emily escaped outside into the gardens, breathing in the fresh fruity smell of the nearby vineyard as her eyes adjusted to the dark. Lena and Dan had chosen to get married in the Swan Valley. They had a huge marquee set up on the lawn at Featherdowns Estate, right next to a giant circular pond with a fountain in the middle. The spotlights at the bottom of the pond made it possible for Emily to see her reflection in the rippling water.
The Girl in the Yellow Vest Page 1