Bachelor Dad on Her Doorstep

by Michelle Douglas

  She would never have had to stay away.

  Stop it!

  She shook herself. She hadn’t returned to Clara Falls for vengeance. Do unto others…that had been Frieda’s creed. She would do Frieda Harper proud. She’d save the bookshop, then she’d sell it to someone other than Gordon Sears, then she’d leave, and this time she would never come back.

  ‘You always were a good girl, Jaz. And smart.’

  It hadn’t been smart to believe Connor’s promises.

  She shook off the thought and pulled her mind back, to find Mrs Lavender smiling at her broadly. ‘How long are you staying?’

  ‘Twelve months.’ She’d had to give herself a time limit—it was the only thing that would keep her sane. She figured it’d take a full twelve months to see the bookshop safe again.

  ‘Well, I think it’s time you took yourself off and got to work, dear.’ Mrs Lavender pointed across the road. ‘I think you’ll find there’s a lot to do.’

  Jaz followed the direction of Mrs Lavender’s hand, and that was when she saw and understood the reason behind the tradesman’s van parked out the front of the bookshop. The muscles in her shoulders, her back, her stomach, all tightened. The minor repairs on the building were supposed to have been finished last week. The receptionist for the building firm Richard had hired had promised faithfully.

  A pulse pounded behind her eyes. ‘Frieda’s Fiction Fair’—the sign on the bookshop’s awning—was being replaced. With…

  ‘Jaz’s Joint’!

  She shot to her feet. Her lip curled. Her nose curled. Inside her boots, even her toes curled. She’d requested that the sign be freshened up. Not…Not…She fought the instinct to bolt across the road and topple the sign-writer and his ladder to the ground.

  ‘I’ll be seeing you then, shall I, Jazmin?’

  With an effort, she unclenched her teeth. ‘Absolutely, Mrs Lavender.’

  She forced herself to take three deep breaths, and only then did she step off the kerb of the island. She would sort this out like the adult she was, not the teenager she had been.

  She made her way across the road and tried not to notice how firm her offending tradesman’s butt looked in form-fitting jeans or how the power of those long, long legs were barely disguised by soft worn denim. In fact, in some places the denim was so worn…

  The teenager she’d once been wouldn’t have noticed. That girl had only had eyes for Connor. But the woman she was now…

  Stop ogling!

  She stopped by the ladder and glanced up. Then took an involuntary step backwards at the sudden clench of familiarity. The sign-writer’s blond-tipped hair…

  It fell in the exact same waves as—

  Her heart lodged in her throat, leaving an abyss in her chest. Get a grip. Don’t lose it now. The familiarity had to be a trick of the light.

  Ha! More like a trick of the mind. Planted there by memories she’d done her best to bury.

  She swallowed and her heart settled—sort of—in her chest again. ‘Excuse me,’ she managed to force out of an uncooperative throat, ‘but I’d like to know who gave you the authority to change that sign.’

  The sign-writer stilled, laid his brush down on the top of the ladder and wiped his hands across that denim-encased butt with agonising slowness. Jaz couldn’t help wondering how it would feel to follow that action with her own hands. Gooseflesh broke out on her arms.

  Slowly, oh-so-slowly, the sign-writer turned around…and Jaz froze.

  ‘Hello, Jaz.’

  The familiarity, the sudden sense of rightness at seeing him here like this, reached right inside her chest to twist her heart until she couldn’t breathe.

  No!

  He took one step down the ladder. ‘You’re looking…well.’

  He didn’t smile. His gaze travelled over her face, down the long line of her body and back again and, although half of his face was in shadow, she could see that she left him unmoved.

  Connor Reed!

  She sucked in a breath, took another involuntary step back. It took every ounce of strength she could marshal to not turn around and run.

  Do something. Say something, she ordered.

  Her heart pounded in her throat. Sharp breaths stung her lungs. Connor Reed. She’d known they’d run into each other eventually, but not here. Not at the bookshop.

  Not on her first day.

  Stop staring. Don’t you dare run!

  ‘I…um…’ She had to clear her throat. She didn’t run. ‘I’d appreciate it if you’d stop working on that.’ She pointed to the sign and, by some freak or miracle or because some deity was smiling down on her, her hand didn’t shake. It gave her the confidence to lift her chin and throw her shoulders back again.

  He glanced at the sign, then back at her, a frown in his eyes. ‘You don’t like it?’

  ‘I loathe it. But I’d prefer not to discuss it on the street.’

  Oh, dear Lord. She had to set some ground rules. Fast. Ground rule number one was that Connor Reed stay as far away from her as humanly possible.

  Ground rule number two—don’t look him directly in the eye.

  She swung away, meaning to find refuge in the one place in this town she could safely call home…and found the bookshop closed.

  The sign on the door read ‘Closed’ in big black letters. The darkened interior mocked her. She reached out and tested the door. It didn’t budge.

  Somebody nearby sniggered. ‘That’s taken the wind out of your sails, nicely. Good!’

  Jaz glanced around to find a middle-aged woman glaring at her. She kept her voice cool. ‘Excuse me, but do I know you?’

  The woman ignored Jaz’s words and pushed her face in close. ‘We don’t need your kind in a nice place like this.’

  A disturbance in the air, some super-sense on her personal radar, told her Connor had descended the ladder to stand directly behind her. He still smelt like the mountains in autumn.

  She pulled a packet of gum from her pocket and shoved a long spearmint-flavoured stick into her mouth. It immediately overpowered all other scents in her near vicinity.

  ‘My kind?’ she enquired as pleasantly as she could.

  If these people couldn’t get past the memory of her as a teenage Goth with attitude, if they couldn’t see that she’d grown up, then…then they needed to open their eyes wider.

  Something told her it was their minds that needed opening up and not their eyes.

  ‘A tattoo artist!’ the woman spat. ‘What do we want with one of those? You’re probably a member of a bike gang and…and do drugs!’

  Jaz almost laughed at the absurdity. Almost. She lifted her arms, looked down at herself, then back at the other woman. For a moment the other woman looked discomfited.

  ‘That’s enough, Dianne.’

  That was from Connor. Jaz almost turned around but common sense kicked in—don’t look him directly in the eye.

  ‘Don’t you go letting her get her hooks into you again, Connor. She did what she could to lead you astray when you were teenagers and don’t you forget it!’

  Jaz snorted. She couldn’t help herself. The woman—Dianne—swung back to her. ‘You probably think this is going to be a nice little money spinner.’ She nodded to the bookshop.

  Not at the moment. Not after reviewing the sales figures Richard had sent her.

  ‘You didn’t come near your mother for years and now, when her body is barely cold in the ground, you descend on her shop like a vulture. Like a greedy, grasping—’

  ‘That’s enough, Dianne!’

  Connor again. Jaz didn’t want him fighting her battles—she wanted him to stay as far from her as possible. He wasn’t getting a second chance to break her heart. Not in this lifetime! But she could barely breathe, let alone talk.

  Didn’t come near your mother for years…barely cold in the ground…

  The weight pressed down so hard on Jaz’s chest that she wanted nothing more than to lie down on the ground and let it crush her.
>
  ‘You have the gall to say that after the number of weekends Frieda spent in Sydney with Jaz, living the high life? Jaz didn’t need to come home and you bloody well know it!’

  Home.

  Jaz started. She couldn’t lie down on the ground. Not out the front of her mother’s bookshop.

  ‘Now clear off, Dianne Keith. You’re nothing but a troublemaking busybody with a streak of spite in you a mile wide.’

  With the loudest intake of breath Jaz had ever heard anyone huff, Dianne stormed off.

  Didn’t come near your mother for years…barely cold in the ground…

  A touch on her arm brought her back. The touch of work-roughened fingers on the bare flesh of her arm.

  ‘Are you okay?’

  His voice was low, a cooling autumn breeze. Jaz inched away, out of reach of those work-roughened fingers, away from the heat of his body.

  ‘Yes, I’m fine.’

  But, as the spearmint of her gum faded, all she could smell was the mountains in autumn. She remembered how it had once been her favourite smell in the world. When she’d been a girl…and gullible.

  She would be fine. In just a moment. If she could stop breathing so deeply, his scent would fade.

  She cleared her throat. ‘It’s not that I expected a fatted calf, but I didn’t expect that.’ She nodded to where Dianne had stood.

  She hadn’t expected a welcome, but she hadn’t expected outright hostility either. Except, perhaps, from Connor Reed.

  She’d have welcomed it from him.

  ‘Dianne Keith has been not-so-secretly in love with Gordon Sears for years now.’

  She blinked. He was telling her this because…‘Oh! I didn’t sell him the bookshop, so his nose is out of joint…making her nose out of joint too?’

  ‘You better believe it.’

  She couldn’t believe she was standing in Clara Falls’ main street talking to Connor Reed like…like nothing had ever happened between them. As if this were a normal, everyday event.

  She made the mistake then of glancing full into his face, of meeting his amazing brown eyes head-on.

  They sparkled gold. And every exquisite moment she’d ever spent with him came crashing back.

  If she could’ve stepped away she would’ve, but the bookshop window already pressed hard against her shoulder blades.

  If she could’ve glanced away she would’ve, but her foolish eyes refused to obey the dictates of her brain. They feasted on his golden beauty as if starved for the sight of him. It made something inside her lift.

  The sparks in his eyes flashed and burned. As if he couldn’t help it, his gaze lowered and travelled down the length of her body with excruciating slowness. When his gaze returned to hers, his eyes had darkened to a smoky, molten lava that she remembered too well.

  Her pulse gave a funny little leap. Blood pounded in her ears. She had to grip her hands together. After all these years and everything that had passed between them, how could there be anything but bitterness?

  Her heart burned acid. No way! She had no intention of travelling down that particular path to hell ever again.

  Eight years ago she’d believed in him—in them—completely, but Connor had accused her of cheating on him. His lack of faith in her had broken her heart…destroyed her.

  She hadn’t broken his heart, though, because nine months after Jaz had fled town he’d had a child with Faye. A daughter. A little girl.

  She folded her arms. Belatedly, she realised, it made even more of her…assets. She couldn’t unfold them again without revealing to him that his continued assessment bothered her. She kept said arms stoically folded, but her heart twisted and turned and ached.

  ‘I don’t need you to fight my battles for me, Connor.’ She needed him to stay away.

  ‘I—’ he stressed the word ‘—always do what I consider is right. You needn’t think your coming back to town is going to change that.’

  ‘Do what’s right?’ She snorted. ‘Like jumping to conclusions? Do you still do that, Connor?’

  The words shot out of her—a challenge—and she couldn’t believe she’d uttered them. The air suddenly grew so thick with their history she wondered how on earth either one of them could breathe through it.

  She’d always known things between them could never be normal. Not after the intensity of what they’d shared. It was why she’d stayed away. It was why she needed him to stay away from her now.

  ‘Do what’s right?’ She snorted a second time. She’d keep up this front if it killed her. ‘Like that sign?’ She pointed to the shop awning. ‘What is that…your idea of a sick joke?’

  That frown returned to his eyes again. ‘Look, Jaz, I—’

  Richard chose that moment to come bustling up between them, his breathing loud and laboured. ‘Sorry, Jaz. I saw you cruising up the street, but I couldn’t get away immediately. I had a client with me.’

  Connor clapped him on the back. ‘You need to exercise more, my man, if a sprint up the street makes you breathe this hard.’

  Richard grinned. ‘It is uphill.’

  His grin faded. He hitched his head in the direction of the bookshop. ‘Sorry, Jaz. It’s a bit of a farce, isn’t it?’

  ‘It’s not what I was expecting,’ she allowed.

  Connor and Richard said nothing. She cleared her throat. ‘Where are my staff?’

  Richard glanced at Connor as if for help. Connor shoved his hands in his pockets and glowered at the pavement.

  ‘Richard?’

  ‘That’s just the thing, you see, Jaz. The last of your staff resigned yesterday.’

  Resigned? Her staff? So…‘I have no staff?’ She stared at Richard. For some reason she turned to stare at Connor too.

  Both men nodded.

  ‘But…’ She would not lie down on the ground and admit defeat. She wouldn’t. ‘Why?’

  ‘How about we go inside?’ Connor suggested with a glance over his shoulder.

  That was when Jaz became aware of the faces pressed against the inside of the plate glass of Mr Sears’s ‘baked-fresh-daily’ country bakery, watching her avidly. In an act of pure bravado, she lifted her hand and sent the shop across the road a cheery wave. Then she turned and stalked through the door Richard had just unlocked.

  Connor caught the door before it closed but he didn’t step inside. ‘I’ll get back to work.’

  On that sign? ‘No, you won’t,’ she snapped out tartly. ‘I want to talk to you.’

  Richard stared at her as if…as if…

  She reached up to smooth her hair. ‘What?’

  ‘Gee, Jaz. You used to dress mean but you always talked sweet.’

  ‘Yeah, well…’ She shrugged. ‘I found out that I achieved a whole lot more if I did things the other way around.’

  Nobody said anything for a moment. Richard rubbed the back of his neck. Connor stared morosely at some point in the middle distance.

  ‘Okay, tell me what happened to my staff.’

  ‘You could probably tell from the sales figures I sent you that the bookshop isn’t doing particularly well.’

  He could say that again.

  ‘So, over the last few months, your mother let most of the staff go.’

  ‘Most,’ she pointed out, ‘not all.’

  ‘There was only Anita and Dianne left. Mr Sears poached Anita for the bakery…’

  ‘Which left Dianne.’ She swung back to Connor. ‘Not the same Dianne who…?’

  ‘The one and the same.’

  Oh, that was just great. ‘She made her feelings…clear,’ she said to Richard.

  Richard gave his watch an agonised glance.

  ‘You don’t have time for this at the moment, do you?’ she said.

  ‘I’m sorry, but I have appointments booked for the next couple of hours and—’

  ‘Then go before you’re late.’ She shooed him to the door. ‘I’ll be fine.’ She would be.

  ‘I’ll be back later,’ he promised.

  Then
he left. Which left her and Connor alone in the dim space of the bookshop.

  ‘So…’ Connor said, breaking the silence that had wrapped around them. His voice wasn’t so much a cooling autumn breeze as a winter chill. ‘You’re still not interested in selling the bookshop to Mr Sears?’

  Sell? Not in this lifetime.

  ‘I’m not selling the bookshop. At least not yet.’

  Connor rested his hands on his hips and continued to survey her. She couldn’t read his face or his body language, but she wished he didn’t look so darn…male!

  ‘So you’re staying here in Clara Falls, then?’

  ‘No.’ She poured as much incredulity and disdain into her voice as she could. ‘Not long-term. I have a life in the city. This is just a…’

  ‘Just a…’ he prompted when she faltered.

  ‘A momentary glitch,’ she snapped. ‘I’ll get the bookshop back on its feet and running at a profit—which I figure will take twelve months tops—and then I mean to return to my real life.’

  ‘I see.’

  Perhaps he did. But she doubted it.

  CHAPTER TWO

  CONNOR met the steeliness in Jaz’s eyes and wished he could just turn around and walk away. His overriding instinct was to reach out and offer her comfort. Despite that veneer of toughness she’d cultivated, he knew this return couldn’t be easy for her.

  Her mother had committed suicide only four weeks ago!

  That had to be eating her up alive.

  She didn’t look as if she’d welcome his comfort. She kept eyeing him as if he were something slimy and wet that had just oozed from the drain.

  The muscles in his neck, his jaw, bunched. What was her problem? She’d been the one to lay waste to all his plans, all his dreams, eight years ago. Not the other way around. She could at least have the grace to…

  To what? an inner voice mocked. Spare you a smile? Get over yourself, Reed. You don’t want her smiles.

  But, as he gazed down into her face, noted the fragile luminosity of her skin, the long dark lashes framing her eyes and the sweet peach lipstick staining her lips, something primitive fired his blood. He wanted to haul her into his arms, slant his mouth over hers and taste her, brand himself on her senses.