Two Weeks 'til Christmas

by Laura Greaves

  And then he was in front of her, his hands on her waist, pulling her to him. She knew what was coming next; she saw him make the decision. His frown relaxed as his lips claimed hers.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Claire had kissed Scotty thousands of times. She had covered his body in kisses from the top of his head to the tips of his toes, and he hers. They had lost entire evenings kissing in movie theatres and dimly lit bars. But this kiss was different.

  This time felt like the first time.

  Scotty was tentative at first, softly grazing her mouth with his. But when Claire responded by pressing her body against him, she felt his hunger overtake him. He expertly parted her teeth with his tongue and deepened the kiss. He was all urgency, all need. He wound his hands through her curls as hers drifted to his waist and up under his shirt. She felt his soft skin, the taut plane of his stomach, the way the muscles in his back moved beneath her fingertips.

  Scotty gently pulled her hair, easing her head back, and started kissing her neck. Claire shuddered as she gazed up at the starlit sky. Her breath came in short, sharp rasps. The ache in her chest migrated to an altogether sweeter, more pleasurable location. He knew exactly what he was doing. It was his signature move when they were together, the one that always made her want to . . .

  ‘No!’ She pushed him with more force than she had intended and he staggered back several steps.

  Scotty touched his fingers to his lips as if still looking for hers. ‘What’s wrong?’ he panted, trying to catch his breath.

  ‘We can’t do this,’ Claire said. ‘You’re engaged to be married, Scotty.’

  He put his hands on his hips and stared intently at his boots. He nodded. Slowly, his breathing calmed. When he looked at her again, there was something animal in his gaze.

  ‘Then why do I want you so much?’

  He stepped towards her, seeking to claim her again, but she moved away. She wanted him too. The throbbing between her thighs told her how much. But he wasn’t hers any more. He was Nina’s.

  And Claire was convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that their marriage would be a cataclysm of epic proportions. If kissing an ex-girlfriend didn’t prove it, she wasn’t sure what would.

  She couldn’t skirt the issue for another second. It was time to lay her cards on the table.

  ‘Don’t marry Nina,’ she said.

  His eyes grew wide. ‘What?’

  ‘I didn’t come back to Bindallarah to help you plan your wedding. I came here to stop it. It’s a mistake, Scotty. It will be disastrous for both of you,’ Claire said. ‘I like Nina. I do. But she’s a stranger. I know she has doubts. And you obviously do too, or you wouldn’t be here, kissing me. Call it off. Please. For both your sakes.’

  She scanned his face for a sign that her words had hit the mark, but Scotty’s expression was inscrutable. Claire felt desperate. He had to see that she was right. He simply had to.

  ‘Say something,’ she pleaded.

  Scotty straightened his shoulders and appeared to steel himself. ‘Claire, I’m going to ask you a question and I’m only going to ask it once,’ he said. ‘I need you to answer honestly. Will you do that?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Do you still have feelings for me?’

  Not that. Anything but that. Jackie was right – she’d suspected Scotty had been cagey about his relationship with Nina because he was trying to spare Claire’s feelings. His question made it perfectly clear that he suspected those feelings went well beyond the bounds of friendship.

  ‘It doesn’t matter how I feel, Scotty. What matters is how you feel about Nina. Do you love her enough to spend the rest of your life with her?’

  And did he believe Nina loved him that deeply? Claire definitely had her doubts.

  ‘Just answer the question,’ he said. ‘You promised.’

  She searched for the right words to explain how she felt about him. In one sense she had deep feelings for him. He made her laugh, both online and in person. He made her feel safe. He made her feel seen. She cherished her memories of the love they had once shared and felt ashamed that she’d been so cavalier with his heart. She was happy, beyond happy, that he was back in her life. She was just so glad, so grateful, to be able to call Scotty Shannon her friend.

  Maybe, if things had been different, she might have considered herself worthy of a second chance with Scotty. If they had found each other again under different circumstances, the fact that they were both a little older and a little wiser might have meant they’d be great together.

  But if returning to Bindallarah had revealed anything, it was that everything had changed. What Claire really wanted, she understood now, was their past. She wanted a chance to make it right. But the past was gone and she had to accept that.

  ‘I don’t have those kinds of feelings for you, Scotty, I swear. This isn’t about me trying to win you back or take you away from somebody that you love. It’s really not,’ she said haltingly. She felt the sting of tears. ‘Maybe you and Nina are meant to be together, but you can’t know that after a month. You just can’t. If you marry her now, you’ll get your heart broken. I care about you too much to stand by and watch that happen.’

  It was like a light was extinguished behind Scotty’s eyes as she watched. All the passion, the fire she had felt in him just moments ago, seemed to drain away. His face fell and his shoulders sagged as though he was collapsing in on himself. The transformation frightened her and again she fought the urge to go to him, to pull him close and never let him go.

  When Scotty spoke again, his voice was flinty. ‘Thanks for your help with the plans, but I think it’s probably a good idea if I handle things myself from here.’

  ‘Scotty, don’t,’ she pleaded. ‘If you’d just let me —’

  ‘I’m marrying Nina on Christmas Eve, Claire. It’s happening,’ he said. ‘Perhaps it’s for the best if you don’t come to the wedding.’

  Claire was stunned. She had misjudged him – misjudged them. She had believed their friendship was strong enough that they could say anything to each other, share even the most uncomfortable truths, the way they used to. But Scotty couldn’t handle her honesty. He thought she was lying – that she was motivated by lingering feelings for him instead of a genuine desire to spare him from the agony of a bad marriage. It hadn’t occurred to her that he could not only dismiss what she said but reject her entirely.

  ‘I want to come to your wedding, Scotty. If you truly feel that marrying Nina will make you happy, then I respect that. I want to be there to share that moment in your life.’

  I can’t lose you again, she screamed inside her head.

  He drew himself up to his full imposing height and squared his shoulders. ‘I’d better check in with Chris. I’ll let you finish up with Autumn,’ he said. ‘You drive my car home. I’ll crash here tonight.’

  He turned and walked away. Claire watched him stride towards the house and wondered if she was witnessing Scotty Shannon vanishing from her life once again.

  Scotty didn’t go into the main house. He knocked on the door, told his brother that Autumn was breathing well, and then, when he was sure Claire would be back in the stall tending to the horse, he doubled back to the stables.

  He went to the far end of the building and, as quietly as possible, used a low-hanging eucalyptus branch to haul himself onto the sloping tin roof. During the day, the view from up here was spectacular, a vista that spanned the hills and the valley beyond, right down to Bindallarah and out across the Pacific to the horizon. When Scotty and Chris were kids, their parents had tried to forbid them from climbing onto the roof. It was steep and precarious in places, and in the searing summer sun the tin got lava hot – hot enough to burn their skinny bare legs.

  But they’d sneaked up there anyway, especially Scotty and especially at night. In the dark he couldn’t see anything but the lights of the main house and the stars. He wrapped himself in the blackness like it was a warm quilt. He’d always loved his roof
perch. He loved that it caught the mellow sea breezes, that it was silent but for the horses’ gentle music below. It was his thinking place.

  And often, in the heady first incarnation of his relationship with Claire, they had done a lot more up there than think. He shivered as his brain uploaded a highlights reel. Memory was a funny thing. Sometimes he imagined his fingertips still tingled with the touch of her creamy skin.

  Scotty could hear Claire now, speaking quietly to Autumn as she worked. ‘I’m so sorry, my love,’ she was saying. Apologising for the pain she was causing the mare. In his experience, it was unusual for a vet to talk to her patients, to seek to calm and reassure them. Most vets were all business, especially out here in the bush, focusing on the injury or illness rather than the patient as a sentient being. But then, there wasn’t much about Claire that could be described as ‘usual’.

  He’d heard it said that the best veterinarians weren’t those who loved animals – they were often too emotional and got too attached. The best vets were those who loved science, loved puzzles, wouldn’t rest until they solved the mystery and fixed the problem, but could keep the animal itself at arm’s length. That was Scotty to a tee. Even when Nina had hit Tank with her car, the part of him that was racked with panic at the prospect of losing his beloved dog had shut down as the vet in him had taken over.

  Scotty was all about getting to the bottom of things. And yet Claire was the better vet. She was emotional and unapologetic about her care for her patients. He remembered how broken up she’d been about losing a horse to laminitis on the night she first contacted him on social media. She loved animals and science in equal measure – and he could never get to the bottom of her. She was a puzzle he simply couldn’t solve, just as he couldn’t figure out how to shake her from his heart. Trying to do either only seemed to make things worse.

  He couldn’t believe he’d kissed her. He hadn’t meant to. But she wasn’t meant to stand in front of him and tell him how lucky he was to be free of her. She wasn’t supposed to rush to reassure him that she had only platonic feelings for him. Scotty didn’t have the words to tell her that, despite everything, he didn’t think he wanted that freedom. He couldn’t articulate his confusion, so he had showed her instead.

  He had felt Claire respond. She had kissed him back with every bit as much desire as he’d felt thundering through his veins. She wanted me too.

  But then it had all gone to hell. Scotty groaned as he recalled how she’d pushed him away.

  You’re engaged to be married, Scotty.

  He’d let it go way too far. What must she think of him now? It’s just a kiss, he’d told himself as he pulled Claire to him. But of course it was so much more than that. It was an announcement. He might as well have shouted it through a megaphone: Scotty Shannon has no integrity.

  How could he ever expect Claire to have faith in him when he’d just been unfaithful to his own fiancée – with her? Scotty had allowed his lingering attraction to Claire to overwhelm him, let himself give in to his still-simmering desire for her, and in the process had made her an unwilling participant in deceiving Nina. And why? Because Scotty was sure that Claire must feel the same magnetic pull towards him that he felt for her. He thought it was fear that had made Claire say she wanted nothing more from him than friendship. That kiss was carnal, wanton, unbelievably sexy – anything but platonic.

  But that was his thing, wasn’t it? Deciding how Claire felt and what Claire wanted without ever asking Claire. He had manipulated her because he wanted her to decide this time. He wanted Claire to choose him, even though he’d already chosen somebody else. Did he really need his ego stroked that badly? He wasn’t just a liar – he was arrogant and cruel. He was a fool.

  Scotty had told Claire not to come to his wedding because he couldn’t bear to have her watch him marry Nina knowing he had already been disloyal. Claire would never forgive him, because it was unforgivable.

  And if she left his life again – left for good this time – he would never forgive himself.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Saturday morning dawned overcast, hot and humid. The air was heavy and stifling, and there was the occasional ominous rumble of thunder in the distance. Claire was glad. The black clouds were the perfect complement to her dark mood; the tumultuous atmosphere matched the turmoil in her head. And at least she could blame the uncomfortable conditions for the violet circles around her eyes, instead of admitting the real reason she hadn’t slept a wink last night.

  She curled up in the worn armchair on Vanessa’s back patio, cradling a mug of tea and listening to the intensifying wind tossing the branches of the fig trees. Just as she’d done all night long, Claire replayed the events of the previous evening in her mind. The race to save Autumn. Begging Scotty to call off the wedding. Assuring him she wasn’t acting out of some twisted desire to win him back. The way he walked away from her without a backward glance.

  The way he kissed me.

  She shook her head to dislodge the memory. She hadn’t been kissed like that in a very long time. Claire couldn’t recall the last time she had felt her body respond to a man the way she had answered Scotty last night. There had been others in the eight years since she’d last been with him – it wasn’t like she’d lived the life of a nun – but none of them came close to matching the physical connection she and Scotty had always shared. It was as though Scotty had staked a claim the first time he kissed her, and her body wouldn’t let him relinquish it no matter how forcefully her brain insisted she move on.

  Claire was shocked by how intensely, how viscerally, she had craved him as they kissed. If she hadn’t come to her senses and pushed him away, she didn’t know how far she would have taken it. She knew, though, that she wanted to take it all the way.

  But none of it mattered now. It had been a moment of madness, lust clouding her better judgement. It meant nothing and thinking about it was pointless. Claire had asked him to reconsider marrying Nina. She had appealed to his logic – to the scientist in him. But Scotty had made it perfectly, painfully clear that the wedding was happening. That was that. End of story.

  Unless . . . Claire wondered if Scotty would tell Nina about the kiss. Surely he wouldn’t want to start their married life carrying a secret like that. Scotty was nothing if not honest. And if he did tell her, what then? Claire didn’t know Nina well enough to discern whether she was the forgiving type. Discovering that your fiancé had kissed another woman a week before your wedding seemed like it would be a deal-breaker – but Claire had learned the hard way that apparently nothing was what it seemed when it came to Scotty and Nina.

  I have to tell her.

  An image flashed before Claire’s eyes. Storming into the ceremony on Christmas Eve, just as the officiant asked if anyone knew of any reason why Scotty and Nina couldn’t be married. Pointing at Scotty and declaring, ‘He kissed me!’ Watching as it all imploded.

  Claire chuckled in spite of her disquietude. It was too melodramatic for words. Sure, it would probably do the trick, but she wouldn’t do it. She came to Bindallarah to try to reason with Scotty, to make him see sense, not to destroy his wedding like some cartoon villain. Simply sabotaging the event would be easy – she would only need to cancel the celebrant or hide Nina’s car keys on the day. It wasn’t just about ensuring Scotty didn’t tie the knot on Christmas Eve. It was about understanding why he wanted to get married so quickly – and convincing him to ask himself that question, too.

  So, no. Nina didn’t need to hear that particular news update from her. Scotty may have betrayed Nina’s trust, but Claire couldn’t betray his.

  Could she?

  There was a ruckus from within the house and Gus suddenly appeared on the patio, looking as gleeful as if Christmas had come a week early.

  ‘Are you serious?’ she said in a loud stage whisper, her eyes shining.

  Claire frowned. ‘Good morning to you too?’

  ‘Scotty Shannon’s car is out the front,’ her cousin said. �
�Is he here? Did you guys do it?’

  ‘Sshhh,’ Claire hissed. Gus’s ‘whisper’ was louder than most people yelled. Claire didn’t need any sharp-eared neighbours getting hold of that particular rumour. ‘Scotty isn’t here. And no, we didn’t “do it”.’

  Well, not quite.

  Gus crossed her arms and glared expectantly.

  ‘There was an emergency up at Cape Ashe last night. I treated one of the horses and then I drove Scotty’s car back to town. That’s it.’

  ‘I don’t believe you. Why are you sitting out here looking all broody and lovelorn? What aren’t you telling me?’ Gus demanded, narrowing her eyes.

  ‘I didn’t sleep well. It was a stressful night. Because of the horse,’ Claire clarified in response to her cousin’s knowing smile. ‘That’s all.’

  ‘Hmm,’ Gus said, clearly unconvinced. ‘What about your date, then? Did you do it with Jared?’

  ‘Gus! Jared is just a friend. It wasn’t a date. I didn’t do it with anyone, okay?’

  Claire had almost forgotten about Jared. He’d been understanding when she had raced out of the pub with Scotty, but she knew she owed him an explanation. Being abandoned halfway through the evening had to sting a little, even though they weren’t technically on a date. It was only a casual drink, but he was fun and she had enjoyed his company. She resolved to call him later in the day.

  Claire drained the last of her tea and stood up. ‘I’m going into town,’ she said. ‘I need to take Scotty’s car back to the clinic and do some Christmas shopping. Want anything?’

  Gus pouted and shook her head. ‘Only the truth,’ she said dramatically.

  Ha. Claire hardly knew what the truth was any more.

  Claire swung Scotty’s four-wheel drive into the car park behind the clinic and killed the engine. There were no signs of life inside the squat brick building. She knew she should have called Scotty and asked what he wanted her to do with the car, but she couldn’t bring herself to dial his number. If he no longer wanted her at his wedding, he probably wasn’t interested in speaking to her either.