New Zealand Brides Box Set

by Diana Fraser

  He grunted. “Do I? And I wonder what you think you deserve?”

  She shrugged, unable to begin to unravel her thoughts and feelings, scared that he’d misunderstand. So she resorted to her usual shorthand—aloof indifference. It had served her well so far. She rolled her head back on the pillow, her gaze fixed on the ceiling with its dense shadows. She tried in vain to quiet her heart. “An easy life.”

  “Don’t do that, Maddy. Not to me.”

  Her smile faded. She should have known he’d see through her facile comment.

  “You think you’re so perceptive.”

  “That’s because I am. You may be right; you may not be good enough for me, but I still want you.”

  “No, Gabe. It’s no good. It doesn’t feel right.”

  “Because of Jonny.”

  “Partly; but also because of me.”

  “My brother could be a pain in the arse, but he was a clever man, and a loyal and loving one. He wanted you cared for, looked after, cherished, by someone he trusted. Whatever went on between us, he always trusted me.”

  She tilted her head back on the pillow and remembered the night Jonny had asked her to come here. She swallowed hard. “I thought I was a messenger of last resort. Someone to heal the rift, someone to show you that the person closest to you in the world loved you, despite what had happened.”

  “Maybe that, too. But whatever, you’re here with me now, thanks to Jonny. We can only guess at his motives, but I think it’s pretty clear he’d approve of us being together.”

  She ground her teeth, trying to rein in her emotions.

  “Stay,” he repeated. “Stay with me forever.”

  She shifted to look at him and knew what he was asking. The small jewelry box she’d seen in his pocket; the champagne in the fridge and that look in his eyes. And she equally knew what her answer had to be.

  “I can’t, Gabe. Don’t you see? I can’t stay. I need to leave. I feel like I’ve been placed on a roller coaster by Jonny which has changed my life, my direction, even me. But it’s time I took control of my own life. I can’t stay. Not while there is confusion and doubt in my mind.”

  He swallowed and lay back, his eyes on the ceiling. “Of course.”

  She flinched at the dead, cool tone of his voice. She’d hurt him, and she couldn’t let him know that that hurt pained her more than anything. “I have to tell you one more thing.”

  He sighed. “What’s that?”

  “My love for Jonny was… complicated.” She said the words so softly she hardly heard them. But, when she turned to look at him, she could see he’d heard them from the puzzled look on his face.

  “Complicated? How?” He twisted around until he was facing her. She didn’t move, but continued to look up at the ornate plaster rose on the ceiling, from which the central light hung. She traced with her eye the thickly painted contours until she’d been around them all.

  She sucked in a difficult breath, frowning as she remembered. “At first, I was dazzled by him and surrendered myself totally for him.” She narrowed her eyes. “Now I look back on it, I’m not sure it was a healthy kind of love. It was unbalanced somehow. And the longer I was with him, the more my doubts grew.” She shook her head. “He knew. I think he must have known. But there was no way I could leave him… not like that.” She broke off abruptly, no longer able to trust her voice as the tears pooled in her eyes and slid down her cheeks, soaking the pillow.

  Gabe’s arm slid under the pillow and he swept her into his arms where she unleashed her sobs into his chest while he continued to hold her until there were no more tears. All that was left were empty hiccupping sobs which he absorbed into his body, trying to relieve her of the pain of loving one brother more than the other.

  * * *

  Gabe awoke the next morning to the sound of a window clunking against its frame, and rain drumming at the window— the first hint of autumn. It wasn’t the best of omens. And nor was the empty bed beside him.

  “Maddy?” he called as he got up, pulled on his jeans and went in search of her.

  But even before he’d finished checking each room, he knew the house was empty. He felt her absence as if it were a physical thing. He drew the curtains and looked out at the sea which pulsed up and down the shore in an agitated rhythm, reflecting the stormy gray skies and scudding clouds.

  He clicked shut the window, whose banging had awoken him. But he could still hear the roar of the sea, and the keening of the wind as it struck the overhead wires. The heat from his palm condensed on the glass, obscuring the trees which bent over, and revealing his reflection—dark shadows under haunted eyes. He grunted. Hardly surprising. Haunted by a twin brother who refused to have anything to do with him in the last years of his life, and now he was dead, refused to leave him alone.

  “You’re a bastard, Jonny.”

  The window blew open again. He swore, and fixed it yet again, looking up and down the empty, windswept, rain-lashed street, for signs of Maddy. Then he saw her—a flash of white-blond hair bobbing on the far pavement, heading toward the sea.

  He quickly pulled on his oilskin jacket and stepped out into the street, buffeted by the wind as he walked to where he’d last seen her. The sea had taken on a different, sinister character this morning. There was none of last night’s lulling passivity, only a barely repressed fury, as the high seas sent sprays across the pier and road. He saw Maddy walking along the pier and followed her. She walked quickly toward a shelter and disappeared from view.

  He stopped for a moment, wondering whether he should leave her to do whatever it was she wanted, but now wasn’t the time to avoid anything, it was the time to face everything.

  He found her sitting looking out to sea, sheltered from the blustery northerly by a wall of windows. She looked cold and numb. He sat down on the damp seat beside her and followed her gaze across the turbulent gray water to the hills across the harbor, their tops shrouded in mist.

  “So you may not have loved him as he loved you,” he said. “That’s not a crime.”

  “Then why does it feel like one?”

  “Because you’re a kind person, and you didn’t want to upset him, or his memory.”

  “Kind!” she spat out. “How can you believe me to be a kind person when I seem to leave a trail of disaster after me?” She looked at him with eyes full of pain, and it nearly broke his heart.

  “Because you are. It wasn’t your fault that Jonny fell madly in love with you. And it wasn’t your fault that he fell ill. And it wasn’t his either. It was just”—he threw his arms out—“life. Fate. Stuff that happens. And you have to move on from there.”

  She looked around like a caged animal, and then back at him with fierce eyes, an expression he hadn’t seen in her before. “After my uncle died I kept moving on. And that didn’t work out for me so well. I made sure I made no friends, no connections, nothing and no one who would touch me, in case they left me again. And then I met Jonny.”

  “And you stayed with him, and he left you, too. But not before sending you to me.”

  She nodded. “I stayed and perhaps I shouldn’t have.”

  His heart sank. He opened his mouth to speak but the words dissolved and fled before he had the chance to utter them. There was only one thing he needed to know.

  “Tell me, Maddy, how do you feel now?” His voice was quiet and urgent, as he willed her to understand what he was asking. But one look at her and he could see that she was still caught up in a whirl of emotions, only some of which related to him.

  “How do I feel? I feel that everyone needs something from me; seems everyone is trying to put me in some place or other. Jonny insisted I keep a promise to come here. I thought it was for him. But it seems he wanted to manipulate me after his death, too—”

  “I don’t want to manipulate you, Maddy. You’ve got it all wrong.”

  “Then what do you want?”

  He ground his teeth as he tried to stop the first words which sprung from his own selfis
h needs to surface. But he had to think about her, now. “What do I want? I want you to go. That’s what I want.”

  Her shocked eyes searched his face as if trying to find a dent, some flaw in the words she’d just heard. “What?” She pushed a strand of damp hair back from her face; her forehead scrunched into a frown. “What did you say?”

  “I said, I want you to go. I want you to leave me, Belendroit, Akaroa, New Zealand if you want to. I want you to go far from here. I want you to go anywhere but here.”

  Her face creased into confusion. “But what about all you said about loving me? Was that all a lie?”

  He couldn’t answer her directly, all he could do was repeat himself. “It doesn’t matter about any of that. There’s only one thing I want from you now. And that’s for you to leave here.”

  He sat back heavily and gritted his teeth, trying to stop himself from going back on his words—words which he meant with all his mind, but not all his heart.

  He looked away as she rose and stood for a few moments looking down at him.

  “Gabe,” she said softly. “Look at me and tell me to go.”

  He drew in a deep breath and rose, then stood before her and gripped her shoulders, staring her directly in the eyes. “You have to go, Maddy. You have to leave all this behind you and find your own path, not a path someone has arranged for you.”

  But the frown didn’t leave her eyes. And for a moment he wondered if somewhere in the night she’d had a change of heart and had decided to stay. But it was too late now. There was no backing out of this. Besides, it didn’t matter anyway, because he knew he was right. She had to leave because if she didn’t, neither she, nor he, would ever know for sure whether she’d stayed for the right reasons—because she wanted to.

  Jerkily he stepped back and dropped his arms to his side. He opened his mouth to speak, but what else could he say? So without waiting for a response, he pushed his hands into his pockets and strode back along the pier toward the town. His coat flapped in the wind, and the rain which had returned with renewed vigor soaked him instantly. But he couldn’t have felt more chilled than he did already.

  He didn’t look back. He didn’t need to; his final image of Maddy would be ingrained in his heart and mind forever: the wind whipping her hair around her face in which two eyes shone with tears.

  He remembered the evening she’d first arrived at Belendroit when she’d sat stunned, surrounded by people who were busy talking and laughing. He’d been struck by that image at the time, wondering what it reminded him of. Now he knew. She was like a fly caught at the center of a massive spider’s web—manipulated until she was well and truly placed where his family wanted her to be. And all he could do for her was to break the skeins of that web in which he, and Jonny and other Connelly family, had so firmly trapped her.

  12

  Three months later…

  The palm trees which fringed the island tossed in the brisk wind blowing in from the Indian Ocean.

  It had been three months since the day she’d flown out of New Zealand, told to leave by the man with whom she’d fallen in love. At the time she hadn’t been able to see clearly. But now, three months later, she could. It had taken three months for her to understand.

  She looked around the place which had been her refuge, where she’d managed to eke out her life on nothing but the inheritance that was solely hers now she’d turned twenty eight. Her uncle had once again come to her rescue by giving her the luxury of somewhere where she could lick her wounds, somewhere where she could allow her thoughts and feelings to settle, and where she could examine them and work out what had really happened.

  It had only taken her two of the months to finally admit the truth, to see behind Gabe’s actions. He was an honorable man, and trustworthy, and he’d done what he’d done because he knew that the final choice was up to her. If Jonny was the twin who’d loved her too intensely and wanted her held within his orbit even after his death, Gabe was the twin whose love had set her free. She’d felt so much for them both, but there was only one who she was able to love fully, without compromising herself, only one to whom she could commit forever.

  It had taken her the third month to set her plans into action. She wanted to show Gabe that she trusted him, and what better way than to choose something freely, and commit to it totally, whether or not she ended up making a fool of herself—something she’d always tried to avoid. The fact that the date was exactly six months from the time she’d first arrived hadn’t escaped her notice, and she knew it wouldn’t escape Gabe’s, but it was of no importance now.

  She went up to the bar, and the bartender greeted her and passed her her usual soda water, as she sat down at the internet computer. She checked her emails and grinned as she read Amber’s updates before turning to the Akaroa Facebook page to see what was going on. There was never any direct news from Gabe, but she could read between the lines of people talking about the different clubs, the hopes that people would recover from illnesses, the occasional death notice, knowing how it all impacted on Gabe. He simply carried on caring for people without making a big thing about it. It was central to who he was. And when he’d told her to leave, she’d thought he didn’t want her anymore, when in fact it was the opposite. He was caring selflessly, yet again.

  She looked out at the blue white-tipped waves, bright against the sky, and the white sandy beach. It seemed an age since she’d landed here, a confused and messed-up person. But time had unraveled her emotions and knots, and she could see more clearly now than she had at any other time of her life. Gabe had given her that. He’d given her space to reclaim herself, to work out what she felt, and where she wanted to be. He’d given her the space and freedom to decide for herself for once.

  And she’d decided; she knew, now, what it was she wanted. But she couldn’t walk back and claim it, because she had to prove to Gabe, after everything that had happened, that she could put her trust in another person, specifically Gabe. So how could she show him that she trusted him?

  What had he accused her of? Hating to look a fool; not willing to trust; too passive in her acceptance of things. Well, she might have been once, but Gabe had given her the opportunity to change. What would be the biggest public statement she could make that would show him that she was no longer any of these things? That she could choose, of her own free will what it was she wanted; what, or who, she trusted in? She could think of only one thing, and she couldn’t do it from here.

  She tipped the bartender but didn’t tell him she wouldn’t be back. She looked around for the last time and returned to the lodge to collect her bags. Her taxi would be arriving soon.

  Gabe walked along Beach Road in Akaroa, past the seat where he’d first met Maddy, and tried not to look at it. He succeeded, but it didn’t help. He still felt her absence as keenly as if she’d been a part of him, prematurely lopped off, after his body had grown the nerve endings to support it. Like an amputated leg, his body still told him she was there. The trouble was, she wasn’t. And he’d have to learn to live without her.

  He continued down the street. It was only midday, but he’d finished work. Amber had asked him to take the afternoon off—something she’d never done before—so he had. He just hoped she didn’t want to involve him in some hare-brained scheme involving her art, which he had no hope of appreciating, let alone understanding.

  As always, when he was away from people, his thoughts turned to Maddy. Instead of lessening as time went by, he felt her absence more acutely. Was it always going to be like this? Instead of receding, his thoughts would swing back to her abruptly, like she’d shouted his name. Once the sound of Maddy calling his name had seemed so real, he’d even gotten out of bed and looked outside, but the street had been empty. And he realized he was projecting his own feelings into his dreams. She was like a ghost who haunted him. He just hoped it wouldn’t be forever, because a full night’s sleep had become a distant memory.

  Even now he thought he heard his name. Then he s
topped and turned. He had. Amber was running down the street toward him, her red hair flying behind her, pink and orange dress a cloud of soft material, and a big smile in her perfectly oval face. He grinned back. Who wouldn’t? You’d have to have a heart made of stone not to return Amber’s smile.

  “Amber! What are you doing here?”

  “I know,” she said breathlessly. “I’m usually in my studio at this time of the day, but I wanted to ask you something, and you weren’t home.”

  He extracted his phone from his pocket. “Heard of one of these?”

  She screwed up her face. “You know I don’t carry one. All those wifi signals going through my body. You shouldn’t either. You’re a doctor, you should know.”

  “Okay, okay.” He didn’t want to get into another argument with his little sister about the dangers of modern technology. “What was it you wanted?”

  She opened her mouth to answer but suddenly looked over Gabe’s shoulder. Gabe followed Amber’s wide-eyed stare to a man, tall, lean and fit, pounding the road with a confidence as if he owned it. As the man drew near—the picture of powerful athleticism—he and Amber exchanged a long hard look. It ignited a protective brotherly instinct in Gabe and he only just stopped himself from stepping between them. But then the man, whose expression hadn’t changed apart from a hungry look in his eyes, had passed and he didn’t look back. Unlike Amber, whose face was pink and eyes wide and glassy as she stared at his back.

  “Who was that?” asked Amber.

  Gabe shrugged as if it were normal to see a God running down the street, making cars stop for him on the narrow road. “How should I know? It’s you who knows everyone around here.”

  Amber looked back at him as the subject of her inquiry turned a corner, without a backward glance. “Well, I’ve not seen him before, or heard of him.”