When Harriet Came Home

by Coleen Kwan

  “Some kind of fancy pool house.” Her father shrugged. “You know your sister. Always likes everything shiny and new. Call him now. He’s a builder. He gets calls at work all the time.”

  The urgency in his voice swept her along. If she was going to call Adam, she might as well get it over and done with now, instead of having the task hang over her head all day long.

  “Okay, Dad.” She picked up her handbag from beneath her seat. “I’ll have to go outside to make the call.”

  Five minutes later she’d tracked down Adam’s number from directory assistance. She stood in the hospital forecourt, gazing unseeing at tubs of marigolds while she screwed up her courage and eventually dialled the number.

  “Adam Blackstone.” He answered on the second ring.

  Thrown by his quick response, she flapped her lips as all her rehearsed greetings flew from her brain. “Um…hi, Adam, it’s Harriet here…er, Harriet Brown.”

  Damn, why did she sound so hesitant?

  There was a weighty pause before he spoke. “I hear your father’s doing well.”

  “Yes, yes, he is.” She wondered how he knew this.

  “I rang the hospital this morning,” he continued in a neutral tone, answering her unspoken question. He stopped, and she could hear some banging noises in the background. She tried to picture him wielding a hammer with a couple of nails held between his lips. What exactly was he doing at Cindy’s place?

  “Harriet? Is there some reason you rang?” A thread of impatience entered his voice. She imagined him frowning down at his work boots.

  “Well, yes, there is. The thing is, ah, you and I have never really talked—”

  “We talked yesterday.”

  “That—that wasn’t really a talk.” Her fingers grew damp as she clamped them round her mobile phone.

  “I don’t need to talk.”

  Sheesh, how rude and arrogant he sounded. Her back stiffened. She snatched off a marigold leaf and crushed it between her fingers, inhaling its pungent scent as she drew in a deep breath. “I think we do. You can’t tell me that, after all that’s happened, you don’t have anything to say to me, anything at all?”

  He drew in a harsh breath that sounded like a growl to her. “Trust me, Harriet. You really don’t want to hear what I’ve got to say to you,” he said, his teeth grinding like pebbles.

  Her lower lip shook, but she made herself continue. “Listen, I know you hate me, but maybe it’s time to let bygones be bygones?”

  “I don’t hate you,” he said in the iciest tone she’d ever heard. “To hate you, I’d have to know you personally, and I don’t know you from a bar of soap. So let’s keep it that way, huh?”

  She trembled, her skin prickling as humiliation grazed over her, but this time a welcome wave of anger washed the embarrassment away. “You haven’t changed much really,” she retorted unsteadily. “You’re still so full of yourself, still full of your own self-importance.”

  She heard him drag in another ragged breath and pictured the lines deepening around his mouth. “Is this your way of apologising? Frankly, my dear, it sucks.”

  And he hung up on her.

  Numbly she stared at the phone. The marigolds mocked her with their bright orange heads. Whatever brief moment of camaraderie she and Adam had once shared was obviously gone—they could barely hold an ordinary, civilised conversation. Her father had thought one simple phone call could clear up a decade’s worth of bad blood, but he was wrong. She and Adam couldn’t even be in the same room together, let alone call a truce.

  The back of her throat smarted. She picked a marigold and buried her nose in it. She didn’t want all these people wandering in and out of the hospital to see how much Adam had hurt her. But hadn’t she said some hurtful things to him too? Things he didn’t deserve? She groaned. Maybe she should call him back…but he’d probably already blocked her number on his mobile phone.

  She discarded the marigold and trudged back inside. So much for making her father happy. How was she going to tell him about the phone call? She walked in to find her mother at his bedside, her makeup restored and only a little overdone. Her father looked drained, but when he spotted her, he broke into a tired grin.

  “See? Didn’t I tell you you’d feel better after talking to him?” He turned to Sharon. “Harriet’s smoothing things over between her and Adam. I’ll feel so much better now when he comes to visit me later today.”

  Harriet collapsed into a seat. “Um, what?”

  “Adam said he’d be visiting me after work today. I’ve been worried about the two of you meeting, but now your differences have all been sorted, it’s a load off my mind.”

  Fan-bloody-tastic. What was she going to do now? Confess to her dad things were as bad as ever between her and Adam? She couldn’t do that, not when his eyelids were drooping with exhaustion and his skin looked all sallow beneath the purpling bruises.

  She chewed on her lower lip. Dad was right about one thing. She’d been avoiding Wilmot for years mainly because of Adam. It didn’t seem right he should stop her from feeling comfortable with her own father.

  No, somehow between now and whenever Adam knocked off work she would find a way of getting him to accept her apology and forge some kind of ceasefire. She was tired of letting the past beat her.

  Growing up, Harriet had sometimes wondered what genetic mix-up had made her and Cindy sisters. Five years her senior, Cindy had always been light years away from Harriet. They were so dissimilar there could be no possibility of jealousy. Titian-haired, willowy Cindy had followed in her mother’s footsteps and done modelling for a couple of years before returning to Wilmot to marry Brett Mitchell, her most faithful of worshippers, who made a comfortable living working at his father’s car dealership.

  Cindy and Brett lived in a new subdivision just outside Wilmot on a “lifestyle” rural acreage. Harriet got out of her newly repaired hatchback and surveyed the place. For her sister “rural” didn’t mean modest. The white Gone-with-the-Wind house reared up like a giant wedding cake, and when she rang the gold-plated doorbell she could hear it echoing through acres of space inside. The sharp clickety-clack of stiletto heels heralded Cindy’s arrival before the door swung open.

  Cindy gave her a lazy smile. “I heard you were back. Mum already driving you crazy?” She lifted one plucked eyebrow before giving Harriet her usual perfumed air-kiss several inches short of Harriet’s cheek.

  “You’re looking good.” Harriet surveyed her sister’s taut figure encased in ripped, skin-tight jeans and tiny, midriff-baring T-shirt. Harriet had lost a lot of weight but knew she would never be as svelte as her sister. To look at Cindy you’d never guess she was the mother of a three-year-old. “How’re Brett and Jarrod?” Harriet asked as they walked through the soaring hallway.

  “Brett’s at work, as usual.” They passed a huge living room lavishly furnished in black and white and continued down the passageway toward the back of the house. “Jarrod’s in here somewhere.” Cindy aimed a kick at a Tonka truck as they entered a vast kitchen-cum-family-room. A small boy lay on the carpet watching television. As soon as he heard them he jumped up and came hurtling toward them.

  “Jarrod!” Cindy’s red-tipped fingers shot out to grab the boy before he could bury his grubby face in her jeans. “How many times have I told you not to do that!” The boy promptly burst into loud, blubbery tears. Cindy sighed. “Look who’s here to see you. It’s your Aunty Harriet.”

  Harriet winced at her sister’s wheedling voice. Jarrod took one look at her and ran off and threw himself on the sofa. The last time Harriet had seen her nephew he’d been a tiny wrinkled baby wrapped up in a blanket. Cindy rolled her eyes and marched over to the kitchen sink where she bent to retrieve something from the cupboard beneath the sink.

  Harriet watched in stunned surprise as her sister lit up a cigarette. Cindy had always seemed so effortlessly, unfairly beautiful, a princess who accepted everyone’s admiration as her mere due. But now there was something
forced and plastic about her beauty. Everything about her seemed hard, from the gym-toned muscles in her abdomen, to the gel in her hair, to the spiky lashes lining her eyelids, to her pink-glossed lips which pursed as she sucked on her cigarette with quick, jerky puffs.

  “Those things will kill you,” Harriet said.

  Cindy crossed her arms, thin shoulders lifting. “So will having children. But kids don’t come with a warning sign, do they? Nobody tells you having a kid will change your life forever.”

  Actually, every parent tells you that, Harriet thought, but she held her silence. After a few puffs, Cindy stubbed the cigarette out and tossed it down the waste disposal sink.

  “You won’t tell Brett, will you?” The waste disposal unit grinded into action. “He doesn’t like me smoking around Jarrod.”

  “Why do you do it?”

  Cindy shrugged. “Helps keep the weight down. Helps keep me sane, too. Not much to entertain me when I’m stuck here with Jarrod and all he wants to watch is Tele-bloody-tubbies.” She jerked her head toward the window above the kitchen sink. “Luckily I’ve got my own real live show here.” She gave Harriet a salacious wink.

  Harriet moved to get a better view out the window. About twenty metres away from the house a new building was going up next to the pool. The concrete slab had been poured, and three men were busy with the framework. Harriet’s gaze skimmed over the first two men and skidded to a halt on the third.

  Adam. He wore jeans and a thin white singlet which clung to his broad chest. His tanned biceps bunched as he hammered away, and his skin glowed with perspiration under the warm sun. Harriet’s mouth went bone-dry. A rush of heat boiled over her, licking her skin, surging inside her breasts, her thighs. Her response was instantaneous. She had no control over it. One look at Adam’s body and desire ignited in her.

  Her fingernails scraped along the edge of the sink as she fought to control her shaking legs. Jeepers, what was going on with her! One look at a buff guy and she went into a swoon? No way. Adam might have had that effect on her once, but that was ten years ago. Since then she’d had a respectable number of boyfriends and was never short of male company. Then again, none of her past boyfriends had ever made her hot and woozy like this.

  She turned away and caught Cindy’s smirk. “Not bad, huh?” Cindy said. “I could watch him all day.”

  Harriet stared daggers at her sister. “Don’t tell me you’ve been coming on to him?”

  Cindy pouted. “Oh don’t get your knickers in a knot. There’s no crime in looking, is there? Men do it all the time.”

  Cindy seemed to be happy with Brett, but Harriet knew her well. Her sister was a natural flirt. To her a man’s attention was as necessary as oxygen. But Adam wasn’t just any man, especially after everything that had happened.

  “I know you don’t think so,” Harriet said through clenched teeth, “but ten years ago I did you a favour. I hope you remember that. Now, I’m going out to talk to Adam. In private.”

  She returned to her car and picked up a basket she had left there. She couldn’t face Adam again without her secret weapon. Wedging the basket under one arm, she walked round the side of the house and approached the building site. Two of the men were straddled halfway up the frame, hammers clanging in the afternoon air. With the sun in her eyes she couldn’t tell if Adam was up there.

  The hammering paused. A wolf whistle rang out from above. Warmth tickled her cheeks. Obviously that wasn’t Adam. No, there he was, rising up from behind a pile of timber, suddenly close to her. Too close.

  She sucked in a breath as their gazes clashed and his face altered. She could see the sweat beading the line of his close-cropped dark hair, could feel the heat radiating off his bulky shoulders, and smell the tang of hard work rising from his chest. A work belt clung to his hips. A smattering of hair flecked his gleaming pectorals above the singlet. With his chiselled face, his impressive biceps and long legs, he could have been a pin-up for one of those beefcake calendars. Mr November, with those grey Scorpio eyes watching her every move.

  She took another step toward him, struggling to ignore the treacherous fluttering in her nether regions.

  “Hi, Adam.” Amazing how breezy she sounded when inside she was a churning mess. “I dropped in to see Cindy, so I thought I’d come out and say hello.” She hoisted the basket in front of her. “Maybe you and the guys could do with a break? I baked chocolate muffins.”

  Slowly she lifted the lid of the basket to allow the tantalising aroma of warm chocolate to rise up. The muffins, which had just come out of the oven fifteen minutes ago, were made with her special recipe. They had a perfect thin crust which crumbled to reveal a chocolatey, gooey, dense interior. In a word, they were irresistible, a fact she was counting on to help break the ice. The two men leaped off the framework and crowded closer, noses twitching, mouths salivating.

  She gave them a brief glance. “It’s Tony, isn’t it?” she said to one of them with a smile. “We went to school together. Don’t you remember me? I’m Harriet, Cindy’s sister.”

  Tony, who had been eyeing the basket of muffins longingly, almost jumped back in surprise. “Harriet! Hey, I didn’t recognise you!” He looked her up and down and gave a sheepish laugh. “Boy, you’ve changed some. For the better, of course.” He must have been the one who had whistled at her, because his grin stretched wider and his eyes twinkled with admiration. “And you can bake chocolate muffins too!”

  She flipped open the lid of the basket. “Help yourselves. There’s plenty here.” Out of the corner of her eye she caught Adam’s lips clamping tight. She ignored him and held the basket out. Tony and his friend grabbed several muffins each before she turned to Adam with an innocent smile. “Muffin?”

  His jaw hardened as though she were offering him boiled spinach. “Let’s talk in private.” He marched away toward his truck parked behind the half-finished building.

  She smoothed down her skirt, took a deep breath and followed him. When they were out of sight from anyone, he spun round on the heel of his work boot. “So what’s the big idea with the muffins?”

  She shrugged, acting casual. “No big idea. I baked some muffins, but Cindy’s always watching her weight, so I thought you guys might like them.” She wafted the basket in front of him. “Sure you don’t want to try one?”

  Adam seemed impervious to chocolate, worst luck. Ignoring the muffins, he folded his arms across his chest, his shoulder muscles bunching up arrestingly, causing her lungs to squeeze.

  “You think you can just come skipping along in your mini-skirt like Little Red Riding Hood with her basket of goodies, and expect me to be nice?”

  Huh? She glanced in confusion at her denim skirt—which was definitely not a mini-skirt—then back at Adam. Indignation welled up in her, but she couldn’t let it get the better of her.

  “I’m not expecting you to be nice,” she said. “Not if you’re determined to be the big bad wolf. I came here because…” She shifted from one foot to the other. “Because I wanted to apologise for this morning’s phone call. I said some things I shouldn’t have. I’m sorry about that and—and for what happened to you ten years ago because of me.” She let out a brief sigh. “I’m not asking you to be friends or anything. I’m just hoping we can agree to some kind of ceasefire between us.”

  Adam stared at her so long and so hard she had to lower her gaze. He let out a gust of air and moved away from her. “I suppose this is your father’s doing.”

  “Yes.” There didn’t seem any point in denying it.

  He picked up a length of timber from the back of his truck and weighed it in his hands. He ran his finger along the grain. “How long do you plan on staying here in Wilmot?”

  Meaning, when would she get the hell out of here? She shut the lid of her basket and rested the edge against her hip. “I don’t know. I suppose until my dad gets out of hospital, which should be in a few days’ time. As soon as that happens, I’ll be leaving.” Assuming, of course, her mother coul
d cope with the responsibility of her father’s recuperation.

  “Just a few days?” His lip curled in derision. “Not much of a stay.”

  Her lungs constricted, and an ache settled beneath her ribs. He thought she couldn’t wait to shake the Wilmot dust from her shoes. He was right, in a way. She longed to return to her active, uncomplicated life back in Sydney. In the city she wasn’t reminded of the awkward unpopular teen she used to be. In the city she had transformed herself into a confident, successful, reasonably attractive woman. But that didn’t mean she’d forgotten about her family.

  She focused her gaze on the blue mountain range in the distance. “I thought you’d be pleased by that.”

  “Makes no difference to me.” He tossed the piece of wood back into his truck. “But I can handle biting my tongue in company for a few days if that’s what you want.”

  She eased back on her heels, relieved she’d accomplished some sort of detente between them. Her dad would be happy, but she wasn’t all that satisfied. Bad enough that her old crush on Adam was as strong as ever, but why did she have to grovel to him? It wasn’t her fault his father had turned out to be less than respectable, was it?

  “It’s what my dad wants.” She lifted her chin.

  “Sure.”

  He shifted, and a ray of sunshine limned the slope of his shoulders, glinting across the sheen of honest sweat on his skin. For a second she had an insane urge to place her palm against his chest and feel the deep beat of his heart. Her own heart leaped, and her fingers twitched in anticipation as though they had a mind of their own and would latch on to him at any second. The basket tilted and began to slide off her arms. Adam lunged forward and caught it.

  Blood pounded in her ears as her cheek brushed against his shoulder and his hands slid along the length of her bare arms to close around her elbows. His nearness swamped her senses. She seemed to have forgotten how to breathe. His strength and masculinity invaded her, the grip of his hands turning her legs to jelly, his aroma more tantalising than any chocolate muffin. For a wild moment she wanted to wrap her arms around him and slide her lips across his skin and lick him, nibble him, taste him.