“What sort of books do you like?”
“I don’t really read.”
“Oh.” Her eyes darted toward his mother, as if she was wondering why his mum had mentioned books if he didn’t read.
“You used to love it when you were young,” his mother said. “Sit down, I’ll be back in a tick.”
His mother strode from the room, her pale purple shirt billowing. Rachel shifted in her seat again, then cleared her throat.
He waited for her to say something, but she didn’t. He should probably say something to break the awkward silence. She was his mother’s guest, after all. But for the life of him he couldn’t think of a single thing to say.
Instead, he crossed to the fridge and collected the sandwich his mother had left for him. He glanced toward the table as he closed the fridge door. Rachel’s back was to him, her head bowed as she leafed through one of the colorful books on the table.
She had a slim neck, long and elegant.
“Mum tells me we went to school together,” he said.
She glanced over her shoulder, the movement making her ponytail swish across her back. “That’s right.”
“Did we have English together?” He had a vague memory of a tall, dark-haired girl sitting near the door of his English class.
“I don’t remember.”
His mother returned with a T-shirt in hand. “Here you go. So we don’t have to sit and stare at your rack all through lunch.”
He shook his head. “Where do you get this stuff?”
“I’m hip. You know that,” his mum said, resting a hand on his good shoulder and giving him a light squeeze. “Would you like some wine?”
“No. Thanks.”
The last thing he wanted was to hang out in the kitchen and be forced to make conversation, but somehow he found himself threading his injured arm through the armhole of the shirt and shrugging into it. His mother steered him into the seat opposite Rachel and placed his sandwich in front of him. Rachel reached for her wineglass and took a sip. It was only when she set it down again that he realized her grip was white-knuckle tight.
His gaze went to her face. Her expression was carefully neutral as she fiddled with one of the books again, peeling off a sticky note she’d stuck to the corner of one of the pages. She was clearly one of those shy, bookish women. Was that what the white-knuckle thing was about?
“So, Rachel and I have narrowed it down to two choices for the quilt border,” his mother said as she resumed her seat.
“Right.”
“Actually, I think I’ve decided on the white one,” Rachel said. She was very careful to keep her eyes trained on his mother, not so much as blinking in his direction.
Definitely shy. Probably freaked because she’d seen him without his shirt on.
“Oh, good. That will be really beautiful. A snowy-white frame,” his mother enthused. “Leo, remember how I told you Rachel’s taken on this big quilting project?”
“Right.” He took a big bite of his sandwich, eager to get this torture over and done with. Sewing wasn’t exactly his thing.
“When was the last time you did any appliqué work, Rachel?” his mother asked.
“It’s been a while. I’m going to need lots of practice.”
“We can get you there, don’t worry. What sort of sewing machine do you have?”
“It’s an old one I bought secondhand years ago. I don’t know what brand.”
Leo ate the rest of his sandwich as the two women talked sewing, then silently accepted a piece of cake when his mother passed it to him. Rachel’s cake was untouched, he noticed, while her wineglass was now empty.
He tuned back in to the conversation, guessing they’d come to some arrangement regarding the use of his mother’s sewing machine, as she said, “Great, that’s settled. I’m sure you’ll find my machine much easier to work with. It’s amazing how they’ve improved in the last ten or so years.” His mother stood and went to the counter, slicing off another piece of cake. He was busy chasing the last crumbs across his plate with a fork, but some instinct made him look up just in time to catch Rachel watching him. She glanced away immediately, but not before he’d seen the unalloyed dislike in her eyes.
Whoa. Where had that come from?
He was still trying to work out if he’d really seen what he thought he’d seen when his mother slid a second slice of cake onto his plate.
“No, thanks. I’m done,” he said, pushing the plate away.
“Humor me and have another slice. I don’t want you getting scrawny on my watch.”
He bit back a sigh. He got that his mother was trying to take care of him, but he didn’t want her hovering over him, monitoring his food intake.
“I’m good. Why don’t you have it later.” He picked up the plate and offered it to her.
“I’ll just leave it here for you and you can have it if you feel like it,” his mother said, putting the plate back on the table in front of him.
It was a small thing, a tiny tussle of wills, but it pushed him from mildly irritated to red-hot angry in no seconds flat. He’d been polite, played the game. She needed to listen to him. Stop assuming she knew better than he did. Stop being so damn nice and kind all the time when he didn’t deserve it.
“I said no.” His voice echoed harshly off the hard surfaces in the kitchen. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Rachel flinch.
What was she, a bloody field mouse or something?
He stood, not looking at either his mother or her guest as he made his way to the door to the garden. Then he was outside, the sun on his face as he strode across the lawn and into the cool leafiness of the miniature orchard his mother had created at the rear of her lot.
He stopped beneath an apple tree, resting his hand against the smooth bark. He lowered his head, staring unseeingly at the ground as the anger drained out of him like water from a bath.
After a minute he sighed and straightened, passing a hand over his face. He owed his mother an apology. Another one.
He walked farther into the orchard, stopping to check the budding fruit on what he thought might be an apricot tree. Maybe he should move back to his apartment, save his mother from his surliness. He could cope with most things on his own now, and his wrist would soon be at the point where he could start using it again.
Then he pictured himself sitting alone in his apartment in the city, imagined how empty and long the days would feel.
Maybe he’d stay with his mother for another few days, after all. If she’d have him.
* * *
“I’M SORRY ABOUT that. That was my fault. I shouldn’t have pushed him.”
Rachel watched as Gabby fussed around the table, clearing plates and tidying up.
“You don’t have to apologize.”
Leo the Loser was the one who should do that. What an ass. He hadn’t changed one iota since they’d left school.
Small correction, if I may: he’s filled out just a little.
Okay, fine, he’d clearly devoted some serious time to pumping iron, or whatever it was that men did to create the kind of manscape she’d just been subjected to. Big arms, defined pecs, flat belly. Shoulders to make Atlas proud.
But the rest of him was exactly the same. Arrogant. Boorish. Rude and crude.
As for him asking if they’d taken English together... Unbelievable. She’d sat next to him in Australian history for two years in a row. They’d even done a four-week assignment together on the Eureka Stockade.
But apparently a lowly creature such as herself had been beneath the notice of the great and popular Leo Bennett. Clearly she hadn’t had a low enough IQ or large enough bra size to register in his world.
Which was more than fine with her because he was a jerk. The kind who took his foul temper out on his lo
vely, generous, kind mother.
“He’s not himself at the moment,” Gabby said, returning to the table. “Normally he’s so sunny. A glass-half-full person. But this accident has really rocked him.”
Rachel frowned. Gabby obviously had a mother’s rose-colored view of her son.
“Ever since he told me he’d been accepted into the fire department, I’ve dreaded getting a 1:00 a.m. phone call.” Gabby shook her head. “Don’t get me wrong, what he does is courageous and honorable and absolutely necessary, but I hate imagining him out there, literally running into danger... He had his heart set on it, though, and he’s clearly good at his job because he’s risen up the ranks. But now poor Cameron is dead and I don’t know what to do or say to help him get through this...” Gabby’s voice broke and she used her fingertips to wipe away the tears that were spilling down her cheeks.
For a moment Rachel sat dumbly as Gabby’s words sank in. Leo had been injured on the job, attending a fire. He was a firefighter. And his friend had died in the line of duty.
A horrible set of circumstances. For anyone.
Even a jerk.
Gabby sniffed and Rachel reached across the table to snag her basket, fumbling inside until she found the minipack of tissues she always carried in case her hay fever was playing up.
“Here.”
She passed the tissues over and Gabby gave her a watery smile. “Thank you. Sorry about this.”
“Please don’t apologize. You’ve been so kind to me, I have no idea how I’ll ever return the favor.”
“It’s nothing. I’m more than happy to help.”
“When did all this happen?”
She didn’t want to feel sorry for Leo. Not when he’d been so rude to his mother. Not when she knew how obnoxious he’d been in the past. But it simply wasn’t in her to ignore another person’s pain.
“It’s been four weeks, give or take a day.”
“Then it’s early days yet. He’s probably still coming to terms with everything. Trying to find his feet. I’m sure he’ll come around once he’s had a chance to process everything.”
“I know. But it’s hard to watch him be in so much pain and not be able to help. If only he’d talk to me.”
“Maybe he’s not ready to talk yet.”
“Maybe.” Gabby gave herself a shake. “Listen to me, moaning at you. Would you like a cup of tea? Or maybe a coffee?”
Rachel could only smile at Gabby’s unstinting generosity. In the midst of her own crisis, Gabby still put others first.
“I’m fine. So fine, in fact, I’m going to help you clean up and then I’m going to get out of your hair and let you have the rest of your weekend to yourself.”
“Oh, you don’t have to go. Please don’t feel that way,” Gabby said.
Rachel fibbed and said she had other plans, then did her bit to help tidy up, one eye on the door the whole time, just in case Leo returned. She heaved a silent sigh of relief when they’d packed the last plate into the dishwasher and he still hadn’t appeared.
“I’ll see you next weekend, then?” Gabby said as she escorted Rachel to the front door.
For a moment Rachel considered coming up with an excuse that would allow her to neatly sidestep the possibility of ever having to be in the same room as Leo Bennett again. The thing was, she wasn’t the sort of person who made friends very easily and she really liked Gabby. And—more important—she desperately needed Gabby’s help with the quilt.
“Shall we say two again? And this time, I’ll bring lunch,” Rachel said.
They finalized arrangements and ten seconds later Rachel was in her car. The moment the door closed behind her, the smile dropped from her face.
She felt...rattled. Seeing Leo standing in the doorway had been a punch to the gut, there was no getting around it. Which was crazy. It had been more than fifteen years since he’d stomped so carelessly and callously on her teenage self-esteem. She’d convinced herself she’d moved on. She was a grown, adult woman now. She was buying her own home. She had a job she loved. She might be single at the moment, but that was by choice. She had her dancing, and her friends, and her garden. She liked who she was.
So why did Leo unsettle you so comprehensively?
She didn’t like this. At all. She didn’t want him to have that sort of power over her. She’d wasted far too many hours dreaming up ways of proving him wrong or hurting him in the way he’d hurt her when she was fifteen.
God, she’d been so miserable for those first six months in Australia....
A car drove past and she glanced out the window to discover she was in her own driveway. She couldn’t remember driving home.
Okay, that was a little scary.
Determined to shake off her weird mood, she let herself into her house and went straight to the iPod dock on her mantelpiece. Two seconds later, the lively beat of El Gran Combo filled the living room. Kicking off her flat shoes, she rose up onto the balls of her feet and started to dance the salsa. She held her arms high and loose, imagining that Greg was leading her around the dance floor. She swirled and spun and swiveled her way back and forth across the timber floor, letting the music sweep everything from her mind except an awareness of her body and the beat.
After five minutes she was breathless and smiling again.
She was endlessly, eternally grateful for the trick of fate that had made her win the raffle at the local school fair just over a year ago. First prize had been five salsa classes at Rosebud Dance Studio. Her first thought had been to give them to someone else, but her friend Lindy had volunteered to come with her. Five minutes into their first lesson, Rachel had made the extraordinary discovery that she had natural rhythm.
From that moment on she’d been hooked, to the point where she’d started dancing with a dedicated partner—Greg—and had even allowed herself to be talked into competing. They’d braved their first competition last month and had danced through it with flying colors. In fact, they’d made it to the next round, a statewide salsa competition where nine different studios would pit their best against one another.
The track on her iPod finished, switching to a slower, more soulful ballad. She started across the room to find something more peppy, only to stop in her tracks when she registered the very large, very fluffy cat sitting on the arm of her sofa.
“Claudius. Come on. We’ve had the you-don’t-belong-in-here conversation a million times.”
The cat blinked slowly, utterly unaffected by her warning. She sighed and advanced on him.
“Okay. You asked for it.”
Picking him up, she took him to the back door and set him on the doorstep, pointing him toward his own house next door.
“Off with you, go home.”
She did a quick tour of the house to find where he’d gained entry and located a half-open window in her bedroom. She really needed to be better about keeping her windows shut because, clearly, Claudius was no respecter of property boundaries. If she wasn’t careful, she would wind up with shredded furniture like Claudius’s doting owner, Jane, next door. Not a happy prospect.
She pottered around the house for the rest of the afternoon and evening, doing chores and catching up on her favorite TV series, but nothing held her attention. Finally, she turned out the light at ten.
The next thing she knew, she was awake and it was dark and her body was clammy with sweat. Her heart was hammering in her chest, beating out a frantic tattoo. She blinked up at the ceiling, slowly coming back down to earth.
She’d had a bad dream. A running dream, the kind where no matter how fast or hard she ran she never escaped.
She frowned, trying to remember what she’d been running from. Vague images came to her—a dark, dimly lit room. The smell of cigarette smoke. The distant bass beat of dance music.
She swore under her br
eath as she realized where her dream had taken her. Back to high school. Back to that horrible night when she was fifteen years old and Leo Bennett had crushed her beneath the heel of his very cool biker boots.
She swung her legs over the side of the bed and walked to the kitchen. The house was dark and silent around her as she ran herself a glass of water straight from the tap. Standing at the kitchen sink, she gulped it down. Then she set the empty glass on the drainer and very deliberately forced herself to remember that night. Because the only way she knew how to defang the monsters under the bed was to shine a bright light on them.
She and her mother had been in Australia for only three months at that point. She’d been dragged halfway across the world by her mother’s love for a big, quiet Australian man called Tom. A relationship that had lasted barely a year—but that was a whole other story. After three months, Rachel had literally still been finding her way around her new school, trying to understand the new culture she’d landed in, painfully homesick for people and places and things that were known and familiar and beloved. She’d made tentative friends with a couple of girls, but she’d still been mourning the friendships she’d left behind, and there’d been so many things in her new country that were just plain wrong. Football, for one, and there was cricket instead of baseball and she’d kept forgetting to look to the right when she crossed the road instead of the left...
But she’d really been looking forward to the school dance. Her mom had taken her shopping and bought her a new dress and new shoes and new dangly earrings. Standing in front of her bedroom mirror the night of the dance, she’d felt almost beautiful, despite the fact that she was almost a head taller than every other girl in her class and, worse still, flat chested. Her dress was silky, the color of caramel, and it made her look elegant and willowy and mysterious instead of gangly and skinny, and the tiny heels on her shoes made satisfying clicking noises when she walked.
Her mother dropped her at the school, one of many parents issuing last-minute instructions. Still buoyed by those moments in front of her mirror, Rachel made her way to the school gym. She’d arranged to meet her friends near the door, but they were nowhere to be seen. She hovered, uncertain and increasingly self-conscious. After fifteen minutes, she decided to find the bathroom, just to make it look as though she had somewhere to go instead of standing around like a loser with no friends.
The Christmas Wedding Quilt: Let It SnowYou Better Watch OutNine Ladies Dancing Page 20