by Nikki Logan
‘I’m not proposing marriage, Dylan.’ Protective habits died hard.
But he saw right through her. ‘Oh, you’re up for something casual?’
Her fist landed poorly on her hip and gave her a body shape that was more child-pageant awkward than sexy and alluring but, once in, she was committed. She smiled brightly to compensate. ‘Well, I’m not exactly booking a motel room, either, but … sure. Get to know each other a bit better. Why not?’
He wasn’t buying this. Scepticism blazed in his eyes and it caused her heartbeat to go berserk.
‘There’s a bed right behind you.’ Dylan stepped closer, breathing down on her, that strong chest just millimetres from her own heaving one, and murmured. ‘Looks comfortable.’
But she was made of sterner stuff than that. She was Brachen-born, after all. Tough bred out here. She leaned into him, not away, and rested both hands on his chest. The contact sluiced all the tease right out of Dylan’s gaze and left something much more serious in its wake. She made sure to get maximum lash flutter in her upturned eyes.
‘It’s not. You complain about it daily.’
There was only an inch between them. Closer than they’d been in an eternity. It reminded her body way too much of the kissing and only made her want more.
‘Kenzie—’
Her hand went out and stopped him before he could step too far away.
‘Do you think you’re the only person who struggles to make connections, Dylan?’ Her breath was a whisper and she hoped that he’d see the sincerity in her fervent gaze. ‘I don’t want to not explore this one. Even if it’s short-lived.’
She wasn’t kidding around now. She wanted him. Bad. She was not about to let Dylan North disappear from whence he came without knowing what it was like to be skin-on-skin with him.
But whatever demon he was battling was strong, and the strain of fighting it showed clearly in the tension marks around his beautiful lips. Yet the last sensible part of her knew that the next step had to be his. She’d made the first move once and worried she’d forced it on him. She wasn’t going to do that again. Her heart battered on her ribcage, wanting out.
Move.
Move towards me.
As though she’d summoned him, Dylan stepped in and slid his hands up to frame her face, sinking all his fingers into her hair and pulling her head gently back. But not too gently. Just the right amount of snag. The tug against her scalp was intoxicating even as the thundering of her blood ensured the thrill got everywhere in her body—fast. But then he paused, holding them both in excruciating suspense.
‘I don’t want to hurt you, Kenzie,’ he murmured, hot against her mouth.
‘How would you hurt me?’ she breathed.
There was the slightest hitch before he answered. ‘When I leave—’
Were all Canadians this infuriatingly conscientious? ‘Duly noted. Now shut up and kiss me.’
Even Dylan’s internal White Knight had its limits and she’d clearly pushed him hard up against it. The guarded concern behind all that heat simply evaporated away as he closed the tiny space between them, until he was pushed hard up against her instead.
Thank the Lord—
‘Kenz?’ Lexi’s voice drifted down from up the hall. ‘You about?’
Kenzie gasped and jerked back just as her lips would have touched Dylan’s. Rehearsals! She’d forgotten all about Yeates and Lexi waiting for her to return to re-run scene six. Hormones had shoved everything but Dylan’s touch from her mind. She stumbled back, out of his arms and into the little bed which took her weight as she began to sink. But the last thing she wanted was for Lexi to walk in here and find her sprawled over a bed, all hot and bothered. Not a good look!
‘Won’t be a tick,’ she called, more croak than cry. ‘Sorry!’
Dylan hadn’t backed away at all. Like he didn’t care who walked in on them doing what.
‘Ask me over for dinner,’ he pressed just as she would have rolled away from him. ‘Tonight. We can finish this … conversation then.’
‘Conversation?’ Unfair how much more composed he sounded compared to her. She really needed to learn that skill.
‘I’d like to talk,’ he went on. ‘There’s something I need to tell you—’
She scrambled off the little bed and away from all temptation. ‘Unless it’s that you have a wife and three kids back in Canada then it can wait a few hours. Seven o’clock?’
Seven meant she still had time to run to the CoOp if the contents of her fridge were as uninspired as she remembered. And to do a little demolition control on her chaotic living room.
‘Well, not three kids …’
‘Ha ha.’
In that moment, future-Kenzie would have sprung forward and kissed future-Dylan firmly on the lips before running back to rehearsals. The urge to do it was almost overwhelming. But they weren’t future them. Yet. Hopefully tonight might change that. No matter how short-lived ‘they’ were before Dylan had to leave.
There was still some time for ‘we’, right?
‘Gotta run. See you at seven. I’ll text you the address.’ Phantom looked from one of them to the other with a high level of doggie bemusement and so she added him in the farewell. ‘Bring him with!’
She hurried back towards the stage, but not so fast that she didn’t buy herself a few moments to catch her breath, cool her skin and recover some composure. Last thing she wanted to do was step onstage with Richard bloody Yeates, still all befuddled from being with Dylan.
It wasn’t until she was halfway back to the stage that she realised she’d totally forgotten to tell him what she went in there for—that Lexi had promised the final act of Larrikin today.
Ah well, plenty of time for that this evening. In fact, if she swung by the CoOp on her way home and got what she needed to make her fridge look respectable, she might even have time to read it before Dylan arrived. She’d love to be able to tell him how it was all going to end. But mostly she couldn’t wait to see what it was that made Draven so keen to pick their story out of all the stories in the world.
What could possibly be so interesting about them?
Chapter Fourteen
Money and breeding couldn’t buy you character, wasn’t that what they said? Clearly it was true, since—despite being comfortable until he was old and grey thanks to Draven, and despite his parents both coming from good Canadian families—here he was, essentially lying to a gentle and entirely undeserving person.
Gentle woman, he corrected himself. His body reminded him every day of that little fact. All Kenzie Russell had to do was jog past him en route to somewhere and her particular bounce, the toss of that half-pink hair, a waft of whatever siren scent she wore got his cells all sidetracked and interested. They ceased focusing on their individual, life-sustaining functions and all rushed to the same side of his body to watch her walk by.
It’s amazing he didn’t fall right over.
That was the only excuse he had for not telling Kenzie way before now who he was and preparing her for what was coming when Lexi finally gave them act three of Larrikin. He’d had at least two solid opportunities: the first time he’d chickened out and the other he ended up in an intimate clinch in a shadowy room instead.
Heroic. Truly.
He caught Phantom’s eye and gave him the signal to keep up. The dog picked up its pace and trotted alongside him in the direction that his app told him Kenzie lived. Brachen wasn’t big by any means but compared to some three-street Aussie towns he’d passed through—even single-street ones—it was big enough to need a map on his first outing to her home. He’d entertained himself all afternoon imagining what that building might be like. Would it be full of antique-store discoveries like her props room? Would it be bright and airy and landscaped like her nan place? Or would it be Scandi-minimal? He didn’t know Kenzie outside of Rivervue. Maybe she was a different person for the rest of the world. That props room was a happy, oblivious bubble. Totally separate from real life. Least
that’s how it felt.
This wasn’t that. This was Kenzie’s home. Other people came here: her family, her friends. He was a very late addition to those ranks. But he was grateful to be in them at all, considering, and that thought kept him marching steadily down her street.
Green. Her house was green. Huh. He paused Phantom outside and just took it in. The house itself was nothing fancy—the street was full of others quite like it. But the green was unique. Even in a town full of artists. Kind of a cross between sage and algae. But in a good way. It looked like the countryside all around them, yet it was soft and inviting too.
Perfect for Kenzie. He took stock for a moment on the kerbside.
Okay, he thought, here’s the plan. We go in, we get comfortable, we make small talk and then I tell her who I am. He looked down at Phantom, You be adorable, you be the equaliser if things get tense. And then, when she’s ready—and before a single kiss more is exchanged—I tell her the truth about her great-grandfather.
Because she had to hear news like that from a friend. And being Larrikin’s author only made it more right that it be him.
No touching. No kissing. No holding. Nothing that would derail what he knew he needed to do.
Yes … That was the plan. It was good to have a plan.
They walked together along the weedless path, up two steps onto the cottage’s verandah and he raised his knuckles to the ornate, cream front door.
Here goes noth—
The door flung inwards even before any knuckle hit timber. Kenzie stood there, blotchy and ruined, a sheaf of papers in one hand and a fist full of soggy kleenex in the other. She sobbed his name as she fell into his arms.
So much for no holding. He’d have to be an ogre not to bring his arms up and circle the traumatised woman into his care.
‘Kenzie, what is it?’
Her response was muffled as much by his sweater as it was by the streaming coming out of every orifice on her face, but he thought he recognised the word.
Oh, God …
‘Nanna? What happened to Nanna?’
Lucy was very old, but nothing about her just a week earlier suggested she was getting ready to check out of this life. In fact, she was downright perky for someone in their eighties.
Kenzie jerked back and crunched the pages in her hand. ‘This is going to kill her.’
For a bright man, it took him a ridiculous amount of time to recognise what it was she clutched in her furious fist.
Oh.
‘Act three!’ she accused. ‘I read it. It’s … it’s awful.’
‘The play is awful?’ he tried, optimistically. Could still be that, right? Though in his heart of hearts he knew it wasn’t at all awful.
‘What it says! Why would someone say that about Nanna’s father? About Brachen’s patron!’
Time to take charge. Dylan edged her back over her own threshold, bodily, and made sure Phantom was inside before he closed the front door behind them. ‘Let’s sit. I’ll get you a glass of water.’
She’d either been so angry or so distraught for so long her common sense had taken leave. She let herself be led over to the sofa and encouraged down into it. He gently uncurled four of her fingers from the pages but not quickly enough; she clutched the script even harder against her sternum.
‘Ugh, it feels like there’s a rock lodged there. It hurts to even breathe.’
Yeah. That was the rock of despair, right enough. Why the hell didn’t he tell her sooner? He could have saved her this moment and broken it all to her carefully. What a shock it must have been to just come across it like that, while casually reading the script. Exactly the shock that was supposed to be there for audiences. Except now the truth had punched Kenzie in the throat.
Coward!
‘Here.’ He thrust a full glass at her. It was a wine glass, a fat round one he’d found sitting on the bench with its mate, and so he figured that she’d planned on drinking something more lubricous than water out of it this evening. A glass of wine would probably have been better right now. A nice and full one.
‘I’ll have to drop out of the play,’ Kenzie wailed, more to herself than him. ‘I can’t do that to Nanna.’
Phantom trotted back and forth, agitated.
I feel you, buddy. As subtly as he could he twisted his fingers into the signal for ‘okay’.
Although things were very much not okay.
‘Don’t make any decisions right now,’ he cautioned. ‘Wait until tomorrow.’
Not that time was going to change a single thing about those pages in her hand. Or the truths printed on them.
‘We can’t put this on!’ Her voice raised to a squeak. ‘What was Lexi thinking?’
Letting Kenzie focus all her anger somewhere else would save him from it, but Lexi had been good to him from day one, so he wasn’t throwing her under the bus. ‘She’s thinking like a director, Kenz. She has a theatre to run and profit to deliver. This is not her fault.’
The redirect did the trick, but it sent her back in a very uncomfortable direction.
‘Draven! That jerk.’
He’d indulged in a couple of foolish fantasies about how the whole Draven reveal was going to go. This was none of them. But it did at least confirm for him what he’d begun to suspect: that Kenzie already knew who wrote Larrikin.
‘What was he doing sniffing around my family anyway? He has the whole world to pick stories from. Why come gunning for mine?’
The metaphor would have been easier to dismiss had he not started to realise how little regard he’d had for the females de Vue had left behind in Australia when banging out Larrikin on his laptop. It was impossible to deny that he’d given them very little thought when he’d stumbled on de Vue’s memoir and become captivated by the man’s story. He’d tossed them aside as much as de Vue had.
‘It was a hundred years ago—’
But not for Kenzie. And certainly not for her Nanna.
‘He was in love with his sister!’ she cried. She held the crunched pages in his face as exhibit A. ‘The passage of time doesn’t change that.’
How far into act three had she read? Chances were good she’d not made it any further than the play’s big reveal. ‘Half-sister,’ he croaked. ‘And he never acted on it. Not once. He left his home, his country—’
‘His family!’ she interrupted.
‘Yes, and his family, which was huge for him, but he did the hard thing, the right thing.’
‘Oh, please. He went to war with everyone else. Not hard at all. It was the law.’
‘You need to read further into the third act. He didn’t need to go. He had a government exemption because he was a primary producer and the only male left in the family. He chose to go, to get away from those feelings. To make sure he didn’t dishonour the Devon name. He left the farm with Mary and ran as far from her as he could.’
She sighed and curled her hands around her glass like it was warm mead and not cool water in there.
‘I thought … I don’t know what I thought. The story, where it was going, I started to wonder if it was going to be a story about him and one of his soldier mates …?’ She ran out of thought and eyes full of dismay lifted. ‘But this …?’
‘Nothing happened. Mary was more like a mother figure to him. He was young and confused. He had a very muddled idea about females and love.’
‘You don’t say!’
He saw the moment that the light bulb came on through all the murk of despair.
‘Wait,’ she croaked. Then she struggled to sit up straighter as her brain kicked back into gear. ‘Have you read act three?’
The squeak was how he knew he was in trouble. He’d never heard Kenzie hit that upper register of outrage. His next steps could be his last.
‘I … Yes.’ That was true. While also not being the complete truth. If she asked him when or where he’d read it, he wouldn’t lie. But did it make him less of a man that he threw a quick nod to a God that hadn’t heard from him in a long
time, hoping that she wouldn’t connect the dots.
‘You knew this, and you didn’t tell me?’
‘I wanted to. I was trying to work my way up to it.’
‘To what? “Hey, Kenzie, just a heads up that the most devastating thing in your life is about to be enacted on stage for the whole district to see? For the whole world to know?”’
‘It’s not rocket science, you just tell me. Especially since you’re also responsible for me being in the play in the first place.’
His gut sank impossibly lower. If only it was that simple.
‘I didn’t know you were de Vue’s family when I gave Lexi the audition video.’
She wasn’t in the mood for reason. She was in the mood to harpoon something. Or someone. Her bleak eyes narrowed. ‘Then as soon as you found out. That was the time, Dylan.’
‘I’m sorry, Kenzie. For all of it. I should have told you sooner than tonight. That’s why I came …’
It sounded hollow amid all her despair, but it did pull her out of her misery for a momentary breather. But her eyes inevitably refilled with misery. ‘You actually wanted to have a conversation tonight? I thought that was just an excuse to come here.’
He glanced around the room then. The wine glasses. Some brie. Candles. The beautifully made up bed visible through a half-open doorway.
Oh.
His crimes piled up onto each other. Not the least because he couldn’t fight off the image of Kenzie laid out on that pretty bed, her cheeks flushed as pink as the hair spread out behind her.
Like this was the time for porno-mind.
‘I … No. I just wanted you to hear about act three from a friend.’
‘A friend.’ She sagged back into the sofa—as if she could become part of it, as if that would be a safer place to be, right now—and mumbled, ‘I appreciate the thought. Thank you.’
No, not gratitude. He couldn’t bear that. Not given what was to come next. If Kenzie disarmed, it would make the next blow too much to take. Maybe emotionally fatal.
He needed her angry, still. Because anger would shield her from the truth.
‘This isn’t Lexi’s fault, or yours or even your great-grandfather’s. None of you put this story onto the page.’