As the conversation flowed from one subject to another, it was obvious that they all knew each other’s lives inside out, and Jacinda was happy to listen, drink the very good wine, and let the voices and laughter swirl around her.
“Riley!” Jess said, as a fourth bottle was being opened. “Can’t you find something better than this bloody world music?”
Caro looked offended. “Our regulars don’t mind this bloody world music,” she pointed out.
“It is great dining music,” Stephanie said, shooting Jess a sideways look. “But maybe something more lively now we’re all finished work? It’s Friday night, after all.”
“I suppose so.” Caro nodded to Riley, who went to the laptop hooked up to the speaker, and selected a new playlist. A top-ten hit came on, and Jess got up, swinging her hips happily to the music.
“That’s more like it.” She grabbed the nearest person, who happened to be Kerry, and pulled her to her feet. “Come and dance, come on!”
Riley slid into the chair next to Jacinda. “Newly single,” she said, waving her wine glass in Jess’s direction.
“Oh…that’s a shame.”
“Not really. He was a dickhead.”
Jacinda laughed. “Well, in that case.”
“Exactly.” Riley raised her glass, and they drank to freedom from dickheads. Then she glanced Jacinda’s way. “Are you okay now?” she asked in a low voice. “I know I dropped a bomb on you.”
She nodded. “Yeah, I’m okay.”
Riley tipped her head as she considered that reply, and Jacinda knew she could see right through her.
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “Some things just suck.”
Riley sighed. “That’s the truth.”
They watched as Jess and Kerry shimmied around in the space left when the café tables had been pushed against the wall. Then a new song came on, and Jess held up a hand.
“This one! Oh, I love this one.” Her face crumpled a little, and she slipped into instant melancholy. “The lyrics, you know.”
And she sang along with the words that were as familiar to Jacinda now as her own name.
* * *
The hourglass turned at our start
And I keep running but my heart
Won’t let me stay ahead of you
Reverberations echo through
All the things I thought I knew
However far I go, one thing stays true…
* * *
As Jess sang, only slightly off-key, Jacinda tried to keep her face in neutral. Hourglass Reverb. The song she’d written when she went home that summer, after everything. The song that had been both therapy and confession, and had kick-started her career. The song that had given her band its name. She waited for someone to look at her, knowing, but they were all looking at Jess as she fell into a chair with a dramatic flourish after the first chorus. “Oh, this song always gets me. Always! But especially now…”
Tina reached over and refilled her glass. “You’re better off without him, babe. You’re too good for him. He always knew it.”
“I never liked that song anyway,” Kerry said. “Skip to the next one.”
Jacinda snorted, then choked on her mouthful of pinot noir. The others looked her way but she shook her head, pointing wordlessly to the glass of wine as she struggled to catch her breath.
“Went down the wrong way,” she managed. She didn’t add why she’d breathed in a lungful of the country’s finest. Kerry’s words proved at least that there were no suspicions about her other identity, and that was a relief.
With a tap on the laptop, Riley banished Cin Scott from the room, and Jacinda felt herself relax as the girls rallied around Jess, sympathizing and encouraging. The night was hers to enjoy, she had great company, and she was going to make the most of it.
* * *
By the time they finished up, Jacinda felt like she was one of the gang. The wine had helped, sure, but mostly it was the straightforward, friendly mode that they all operated in. As far as she could tell, there were no unspoken tensions, no veiled comments or rolled eyes behind anyone else’s back…just a bunch of girls shaking off the weight of the week, and helping Jess shake off her lousy ex.
Caro had left before midnight, because she was working the next morning. But Riley was taking the Sunday morning shift, so she stayed and partied on with the rest of them. Finally, they all tumbled out the front door just after two in the morning, unsteady on their feet. After farewells and hugs, Riley wobbled off on her bike in the direction of her place, which sat higher up on Bay Road, heading toward the Other Side, and everyone else left on foot. Stephanie and Tina peeled off to their own houses as they walked the quiet streets, giggling and shushing each other occasionally. When they came to the corner of Tui Street, Kerry and Jess offered to walk down with her, but Jacinda shook her head. It only made the world spin slightly. Well, a medium amount. Or maybe, down here in the southern hemisphere, the moon danced in the sky like that every night.
“It’ll only take me a minute,” she said, gathering herself together. “I can see the front gate from here. You guys keep going.”
“Okay, you darling American girl,” Kerry said, and gave her a hug, the wine making her effusive. “It was really, really, just so nice to see you, even though I don’t think you remembered us.”
“Oh, well…I mostly did…” she began, but Jess laughed.
“We don’t expect you to remember us,” she said. “We weren’t in the cool crowd that summer. But we remember you. Who wouldn’t remember the girl who appeared out of the blue and snagged Ethan Ward?”
Kerry sighed. “Oh, that guy. Didn’t we all just love him? I don’t think there was a girl in Sweet Breeze Bay who didn’t have a crush on him.”
“What kind of magical power did you bring with you, to bewitch him?” Jess asked. “He obviously couldn’t live without you after you disappeared like that.”
Jacinda’s stomach lurched with a sudden pain, and she pressed her fist to her middle. There it was, proof that the old saying was literally true: the truth hurts.
“Jess!” Kerry scolded. “Oh my God. Why would you say something like that?”
Jess looked remorseful, but there was no way to backpedal. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean…I mean…” She gave up, flustered, her already wine-pink cheeks turning red under the streetlight.
Jacinda felt her fingernails digging into her palms, and her throat tighten.
“That’s okay,” she said, her voice tense but even. “If that’s what people think, then…maybe they’re right.”
Maybe not as even as she’d hoped.
Kerry and Jess looked at each other, but before they could say anything more, Jacinda stepped back. Have to get away.
“Thanks for a great night. I’ll see you around.”
And she waved, and turned and walked away. Away from Jess’s words, away from their remorseful, sympathetic looks…but still in the one place in the world where the truth sat deepest and strongest.
Chapter Thirteen
By the time she reached the gate at number ten, her tension rising higher with each step, she was so wound up that she couldn’t go inside. All she wanted to do was keep walking. There was only one place to go, even though there were memories there too: the beach. She went on past her house, and past the Ward house—in darkness, as she’d expect at two thirty in the morning—and slipped down the narrow beach alley.
When she reached the sand, she bent down and took off her sandals, and left them by the hedge. Even though the city was just on the other side of the peninsula, there was more of the galaxy visible here than she ever saw in LA. She walked in starry moonlight toward the water, feeling the pull of the ocean in her soul.
She stood in the foamy water’s edge as the sand washed out from under her heels, letting herself sink deeper one wave at a time. When she was finally about to lose her balance, she stepped forward into the sea. The daytime breeze had died away and the water in front
of her was eerily still, but every now and then a swell caught the hem of her dress. She dipped her fingers into the water as she walked out, tempted to pull off the dress and dive in. But it was a delusion to think the sea could wash away her sins. This very place, this ocean, wasn’t enough to heal Ethan’s pain. Maybe it was only right that she should bear it for him now.
Thinking about him, she felt a prickle on the back of her neck and turned around, spooked. Then she cried out, and pressed a hand to her mouth to stifle the sound.
There was someone on the beach.
But it wasn’t Ethan. Of course not.
It was Liam.
She started to wade back in, the frustrating weight of the water slowing each step. The closer she got to the shore, the more she wanted to be on solid ground again. She splashed through the shallows and started up the sand toward him, while he waited. She couldn’t see his expression, and she hardly wondered why he was here, in the moonlight, in the middle of the night. Same reason she was, maybe.
When she was just a few feet away, she stopped. Standing in the water, she’d still felt the red-wine haze, but now she was sharply, abruptly sober. The salt-water drops were itchy on her legs, and the three-quarter sleeves of her dress were wet, but she stood still in front of him.
He never had looked much like his brother.
Then again, she’d never seen Ethan look at her the way Liam was now. Deeper, darker, his expression direct but unreadable.
What had she thought he was here for, standing on the beach?
For a moment she felt a chill run down her spine. She really didn’t know this guy, or what he was capable of. But she did know how angry he was at her. She looked up and down the beach, but they were alone, just them and the waxing moon. In any other situation this would be romantic. In any other situation where his face wasn’t shadowed with disgust.
“I said I was sorry,” she said.
When she’d opened her mouth, she’d intended the words to sound sorry, but seeing him look at her with that expression, a sort of rebellion had crept into her voice.
“Yeah. I know.”
His tone made her mad. Not an appropriate reaction, a little voice in the back of her head said, but she couldn’t stop herself. “How sorry do I have to be?”
He took a step nearer, reaching for her arm, and her entire nervous system leapt into high alert. Was he looking so tortured because he was going to kiss her again, which was obviously some special kind of self-inflicted punishment? Or…was it because he was compelled to wring her neck, as unavoidable retribution for her causing Ethan’s death? A shot of adrenaline hit her, and she spun around, out of his reach, and made for the alley.
On the third stride she felt an agonizing pain as something small but lethal stabbed into the sole of her foot. As she crumpled to the sand, trying to decide whether it was a scorpion, a snake, or some kind of bitey sand spider, she could see him coming toward her.
He tried to help her up, but she pulled away. “It’s just some kind of bite. I don’t need any help.”
“Don’t you?”
She hesitated, clutching her foot. Any poison would be starting to work its way up her leg by now. “Oh, shit. Do you think I should go to the emergency room?”
He bent down and picked something up, then held it up for her to see.
“Yeah, the Barbie doctor will see you now.”
Oh, great. She remembered now. After she’d already made an idiot of herself. There was nothing poisonous in this country at all—apart from the vibes she was shooting at him as he stood there holding the stupid doll in his hand. She rubbed the bottom of her foot, wiggled her toes, and got up, pulling herself as tall as she could in her bare feet. “It’s not a Barbie. It’s a Bratz.”
He shrugged and handed her the offending toy. “Almost as spiky as you.”
“Spiky? This from the guy who didn’t want to hear any kind of sorry from me the other day.” She narrowed her eyes. “And why are you following me around in the middle of the night, anyway?”’
He looked out to sea, where the looming peak of the volcano guarded the bay, and she saw his jaw tense.
“I work at night. I have clients in different time zones.”
She looked up and down the beach. “I don’t see any clients here.”
“They—” He stopped himself. “What I do at night doesn’t have anything to do with you.”
She raised an eyebrow at his accidental innuendo, and…was he blushing now? There was a surprising satisfaction in seeing him flustered. Thank God he couldn’t read her mind, because what she’d been doing at night lately had more than a little to do with him. Now was the moment to turn and leave…but some devil on her shoulder drove her on. It wanted payback for the way he’d cut her off when she’d tried to reach out, payback for letting everyone (including her) think Ethan’s death was her fault, and payback for the kiss. With that kiss, he’d cut right to a small and vulnerable spot, and, more fool her, she’d let him know it. And feel it, and hear it. But apparently he had a vulnerable spot too.
Before he could say anything else, she let the doll fall to the sand, took a step closer, and reached one hand up to the back of his neck.
He didn’t push her away.
Just before she closed her own eyes, she saw the expression in his. Was that how she’d looked, pressed up against the wall of his house? Surprised, hesitant, and…aroused. She squeezed her eyes shut. Payback, that was all.
As their lips met, she took a hold of his jeans at the buckle, and pulled him closer. He made a sound somewhere between anger and defeat, and leaned down to kiss her back, harder and more urgently than she’d bargained for. Her own body responded with treacherous ease, her tongue meeting his, her hips searching for that sweet-hot connection. In the cool, moonlit air, the sudden flare between them felt hot enough to turn the sand to glass at their feet. He buried his hands in her hair, and she let her head tip back as he kissed her, sinking further into an unexpected blur of desire and surrender.
But then one tiny, sane corner of her brain resurfaced, reminding her of exactly who she was clinging to.
This was not what she set out to do.
She took herself back, breaking their connection with one forceful shove against his chest. Then, without looking at him, she turned and walked away, only stopping to pick up her sandals before heading down the alley and out of sight.
She could play that game too. And when she played, she intended to win.
Chapter Fourteen
The knock came again, loud and insistent, and Liam dragged himself away from the computer. Either someone was ignoring the ‘No Soliciting’ sign he’d put up, or it was Jacinda. Either way, he wasn’t in the mood.
He went out to the entranceway, where two tall, broad-shouldered figures were visible through the frosted glass door. Not Jacinda then. Good. He’d rather let his bad temper rip on some unsuspecting salesmen than have to deal with her again. After she’d left him standing on the beach last night, he’d almost thrown himself into the sea to cool off. Instead, he came back to the house for a hard drink and a cold shower. Sleep hadn’t come easy.
Now one of the figures stepped closer and pounded on the door again, and suddenly he knew who it was. He jerked the door open, leaving the visitor with his hand in the air.
“You know there’s a doorbell, right?”
Connor’s wide grin took Liam straight back to the good years. “I’m not ringing that thing. Are we men, or not?”
“Some of us are,” said Dane, balancing two boxes of beer in his arms.
Liam stood back to let them in, laughing. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“That’s what we came to ask you,” Connor replied as they went into the living room. He took off his jacket and threw it on the window seat, looking around. In his fitting t-shirt, his muscular frame was a stark contrast to the skinny kid he’d once been.
“Jesus, what happened to you?” Liam asked.
“Don’t flatte
r him,” Dane warned, putting the beer on the floor and lowering himself into an armchair. “He already thinks he’s God’s gift.”
Connor shrugged and sat in the window seat. “It’s pretty hard to meet girls in Dubai. Have to burn off all that energy somehow.” He flexed a bicep, and grinned again.
Liam raised an eyebrow. “Dubai? That’s where you ended up?”
“Yeah, for my sins. There’s endless work there for engineers, and the money’s ridiculous, especially if you start moving into the property development side of things like I have. A few shady characters to watch out for, but you know—if there’s big money up for grabs, there’ll be big personalities playing the game. Sometimes you step on a few toes.” He grinned, apparently unbothered by any toe-stepping he might have done. “Anyway, they pay for me to come home twice a year. So here I am,” he added, holding out his hands.
“We heard you were back,” Dane said to Liam. “So I decided to come over too. Even though we’ve been in the same country the last few years.”
“Yeah…sorry.” He never had replied to Dane’s messages way back when. When he’d left the bay with his parents after Ethan’s death, he’d also cut himself off from his friends. At the time, he just couldn’t deal with any of them, and even though he’d felt increasingly shitty about it over the years, he’d never looked back. But judging by their attitude now, it seemed like he’d been forgiven. “How’s Melbourne?” he asked Dane.
“It’s fine. I’m not always there, though—I travel a lot, wherever the work takes me.”
When they were young, Dane had always talked about being a diver, so Liam had been surprised to hear he’d gone to university instead of doing a dive course. “You did the sport and exercise science degree, right? So what kind of work are you doing?”
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