Bachelor Dad on Her Doorstep

by Michelle Douglas

  Every cell in his body tightened and burned at the thought. The intensity of it took him off guard. Had his heart thudding against his ribcage. After eight years…

  After eight years he hadn’t expected to feel anything. He sure as hell hadn’t expected this.

  He rolled his shoulders and tried to banish the images from his mind. Every stupid mistake he’d made with his life had happened in the weeks after Jaz had left town. He couldn’t blame her for the way he’d reacted to her betrayal—that would be childish—but he would never give her that kind of power over him again.

  Never.

  She stuck out her chin, hands on hips—combative, aggressive and so unlike the Jaz of old it took him off guard. ‘Why did you change the sign? Who gave you permission?’

  She moved behind the sales counter, stowed her handbag beneath it, then turned back and raised an eyebrow. ‘Well?’ She tapped her foot.

  Her boot—a pretty little feminine number in brown suede and as unlike her old black Doc Martens as anything could be—echoed smartly against the bare floorboards. Or maybe that was due to the silence that had descended around them again. He hooked his thumbs through the belt loops of his jeans and told himself to stay on task. It was just…that lipstick.

  He’d once thought that nothing could look as good as the mulberry dark matt lipstick she’d once worn. He stared at the peach shine on her lips now. He’d been wrong.

  ‘Connor!’

  He snapped to and bit back something succinct and rude. The sign, idiot!

  ‘I’m simply following the instructions you left with my receptionist.’

  She stared at him for a long moment. Then, ‘Can you seriously imagine that I’d want to call this place Jaz’s Joint?’ Her lip curled. ‘That sounds like a den of iniquity, not a bookshop.’

  She looked vivid fired up like that—alive. It suddenly occurred to him that he hadn’t felt alive in a very long time.

  He shifted his weight, allowed his gaze to travel over her again, noticed the way she turned away and bit her lip. That was familiar. She wasn’t feeling anywhere near as sure of herself as she’d have him believe.

  ‘I’m not paid to imagine.’ At the time, though, her request had sent his eyebrows shooting up towards his hairline. ‘Eight years is a long time. People change.’

  ‘You better believe it!’

  He ignored her vehemence. ‘You told my receptionist you wanted “Jaz’s Joint” painted on the awning. I was just following your instructions.’ But as he said the words his stomach dipped. Her eyes had widened. He remembered how they could look blue or green, depending on the light. They glittered blue now in the hushed light of the bookshop.

  ‘Those weren’t my instructions.’

  His stomach dropped a notch lower. Not her directions…Then…

  ‘I just requested that the sign be freshened up.’

  He swore. Once. Hard.

  Jaz blinked. ‘I beg your pardon?’

  Her tone almost made him grin. As a teenager she’d done all she could to look hard as nails, but she’d rarely used bad language and she hadn’t tolerated it in others.

  He sobered. ‘Obviously, somewhere along the line a wire’s got crossed.’ If his receptionist had played any part in the Jaz’s Joint prank he’d fire her on the spot.

  Jaz followed his gaze across the road to Mr Sears’s bakery. ‘Ahh…’ Her lips twisted. ‘I see.’

  Did she? For reasons Connor couldn’t fathom, Gordon Sears wanted the bookshop, and he wanted it bad.

  She sprang out from behind the counter as if the life force coursing through her body would no longer allow her to coop it up in such a small space. She stalked down the aisles, with their rows upon rows of bookcases. Connor followed.

  The Clara Falls bookshop had been designed with one purpose in mind—to charm. And it achieved its aim with remarkable ease. The gleaming oak bookcases contrasted neatly with wood-panelled walls painted a pale clean green. Alcoves and nooks invited browsers to explore. Gingerbread fretwork lent an air of fairy-tale enchantment. Jaz had always loved the bookshop, and Frieda hadn’t changed a thing.

  Therein lay most of its problems.

  ‘I’ll change the sign back. It’ll be finished by the close of business today.’

  She glanced back at him, a frown in her eyes. ‘Why you?’

  She turned around fully, folded her arms and leant against the nearest bookcase. To the right of her left hip a book in vivid blues and greens faced outwards—Natural Wonders of the World—it seemed apt. He dragged his gaze from her hips and the long, lean length of her legs. Way too apt.

  But…

  He’d never seen her wear such pretty, soft-looking trousers before. Mel would love those trousers. The thought flitted into his head unbidden and his heart clenched at the thought of his daughter. He gritted his teeth and pushed the thought back out again. He would not think of Mel and Jaz in the same sentence.

  But…

  Eight years ago he’d grown used to seeing Jaz in long black skirts…or naked.

  And then she’d removed herself from his world and he hadn’t seen her at all.

  ‘Is that what you’re doing these days—sign-writing?’

  Her words hauled him back and he steeled himself not to flinch at her incredulity. ‘Among other things.’ He shoved his hands in his pockets. ‘After graduation I took up a carpentry apprenticeship.’ He’d relinquished his dream of art school. ‘I run a building contractor’s business now here in Clara Falls.’

  Her jaw dropped. ‘What about your art?’

  Just for a moment, bitterness seeped out from beneath the lid he normally kept tightly sealed around it. ‘I gave it up.’

  Her head snapped back. ‘You what?’

  The madness had started the night he’d discovered Jaz in Sam Hancock’s arms. When he’d found out the next day that Jaz had left town—left him—for good, Connor had gone off the rails. He’d drunk too much…he’d slept with Faye. Faye, who’d revealed Jaz’s infidelity, her lies. Faye, who’d done all she could to console him when Jaz had gone. Faye whose heart he’d broken. When Faye had told him she was pregnant, he’d had no choice—he’d traded in his dream of art school to become a husband and father…and an apprentice carpenter.

  He hadn’t picked up a stick of charcoal since.

  ‘Is that somehow supposed to be my fault?’

  Jaz’s snapped-out words hauled him back. ‘Did I say that?’

  He and Faye had lasted two years before they’d finally divorced—Jaz always a silent shadow between them. They’d been two of the longest years of his life.

  It was childish to blame Jaz for any of that. He had Melanie. He could never regret his daughter.

  Jaz’s eyes turned so frosty they could freeze a man’s soul. Connor’s lips twisted. They couldn’t touch him. His soul had frozen eight years ago.

  And yet she was here. From all accounts a world-class tattoo artist, if Frieda’s boasts could be believed.

  Dianne was right. Clara Falls had no need for tattoo artists—world-class or otherwise.

  And neither did he.

  Silence descended around them. Finally, Jaz cleared her throat. ‘I take it then that you’re the builder Richard hired to do the work on this place?’ She lifted a hand to indicate the interior of the shop, and then pointed to the ceiling to indicate the flat upstairs.

  ‘That’s right.’

  She pushed away from the bookcase, glanced around. ‘Considering the amount of work Richard told me needed doing, the place looks exactly as I remember it.’

  Her eyes narrowed. He watched her gaze travel over every fixture and furnishing within her line of sight. ‘Exactly the same.’ She turned accusing eyes on him.

  ‘That’s because I’ve barely started work in here yet.’

  Her jaw dropped. ‘But…but your receptionist assured me all the work would be finished by Thursday last week.’

  The muscles in his jaw bunched. ‘You’re sure about that?’
/>
  ‘Positive.’

  He didn’t blame her for her gritted teeth response. ‘I’m sorry, Jaz, but you were given the wrong information.’ And he’d be getting himself a new receptionist—this afternoon, if he could arrange it.

  She pressed her lips so tightly together it made his jaw ache in sympathy. Then she stiffened. ‘What about the OH and S stuff? Hell, if that hasn’t been sorted, then—’

  ‘That’s the part I’ve taken care of.’

  Several weeks ago, someone had filed an Occupation Health and Safety complaint. It had resulted in an OH and S officer coming out to inspect the premises…and to close the shop down when it had been discovered that two floor to ceiling bookcases, which should’ve been screwed fast to battens on the wall behind, had started to come away, threatening to topple and crush anyone who might happen to be below. Connor had put all his other jobs on hold to take care of that. The bookshop had only been closed for a day and a half.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why?’ What the hell…‘Because it was dangerous, that’s why.’

  ‘Not that.’ She waved an imperious hand in the air. ‘Why is it your company that is doing the work?’

  Because Richard had asked him to.

  Because he’d wanted to prove that the past had no hold over him any more.

  She folded her arms. ‘I should imagine the last thing you wanted was to clap eyes on me again.’

  She was right about that.

  She stuck out a defiant hip. ‘In fact, I’d guess that the last thing you want is me living in Clara Falls again.’

  It took a moment for the import of her words to hit him. When they did, he clenched a fist so tight it started to shake. She glanced at his fist, then back into his face. She cocked an eyebrow. She didn’t unsay her words.

  ‘Are you insinuating that I’d use my position as a builder to sabotage your shop?’ He tried to remember the last time he’d wanted to throttle someone.

  ‘Would you? Have you? I mean…There’s that travesty of a sign, for a start. Now the delay. What would you think? You and Gordon Sears could be like that—’ she waved two crossed fingers under his nose ‘—for all I know.’

  ‘God, Jaz! I know it’s been eight years, but can you seriously think I would stoop to that?’

  She raked him from the top of his head to his boot laces with her hot gaze—blue on the way down, green when she met his eyes again on the way up—and it felt as if she actually placed her hands on his body and stroked him. His heart started to thump. She moistened her lips. It wasn’t a nervous gesture, more…an assessing one. But it left a shine on her lips that had him clenching back a groan.

  ‘Business is business,’ he ground out. ‘I don’t have to like who I’m working for.’

  Was it his imagination or did she pale at his words?

  Her chin didn’t drop. ‘So you’re saying this is just another job to you?’

  He hesitated a moment too long.

  Jaz snorted and pushed past him, charged back down to the sales counter and stood squarely behind it, as if she wanted to place herself out of his reach. ‘Thank you for the work you’ve done so far, Connor, but your services are no longer required.’

  He stalked down to the counter, reached across and gripped her chin in his fingers, forced her gaze to his. ‘Fine! You want the truth? This isn’t just another job. What happened to your mother…It made me sick to my stomach. We…someone in town…we should’ve paid more attention, we should’ve sensed that—’

  He released her and swung away. She smelt like a wattle tree in full bloom—sweet and elusive. It was too much.

  When he glanced back at her, her eyes had filled with tears. She touched her fingers to her jaw where he’d held her. Bile rose up through him. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—’ He gestured futilely with his hand. ‘Did I hurt you?’

  ‘No.’

  She shook her head, her voice low, and he watched her push the tears down with the sheer force of her will…way down deep inside her like she used to do. Suddenly he felt older than his twenty-six years. He felt a hundred.

  ‘I’m sorry I doubted your integrity.’

  She issued her apology with characteristic sincerity and speed. He dragged a hand down his face. The Jaz of old might’ve been incapable of fidelity, but she’d been equally incapable of malice.

  If she’d asked him to forgive her eight years ago, he would have. In an instant.

  He shoved his hands in his pockets. ‘Am I rehired?’

  She straightened, moistened her lips and nodded. He didn’t know how he could tell, but this time the gesture was nervous.

  ‘You won’t find it hard coping with my presence around the place for the next fortnight?’ Some devil prompted him to ask.

  ‘Of course not!’

  He could tell that she was lying.

  ‘We’re both adults, aren’t we? What’s in the past is in the past.’

  He wanted to agree. He opened his mouth to do precisely that, but the words refused to come.

  Jaz glanced at him, moistened her lips again. ‘It’s going to take a fortnight? So long?’

  ‘Give or take a couple of days. And that’s working as fast as I can.’

  ‘I see.’

  He shoved his hands deeper into his pockets. ‘I’ll get back to work on that sign then, shall I?’

  The door clanged shut behind Connor with a finality that made Jaz want to burst into tears.

  Crazy. Ridiculous.

  Her knees shook so badly she thought she might fall. Very carefully, she lowered herself to the stool behind the counter. Being found slumped on the floor was not the look she was aiming for, not on her first day.

  Not on any day.

  She closed her eyes, dragged in a deep breath and tried to slow her pulse, quieten the blood pounding in her ears. She could do this. She could do this. She’d known her first meeting with Connor would be hard. She hadn’t expected to deal with him on her first day though.

  Hard? Ha! Try gruelling. Exhausting. Fraught.

  She hadn’t known she would still feel his pain as if it were her own. She hadn’t known her body would remember…everything. Or that it would sing and thrum just because he was near.

  She hadn’t known she’d yearn for it all again—their love, the rightness of being with him.

  Connor had shown her the magic of love, but he’d shown her the other side of love too—the blackness, the ugliness…the despair. It had turned her into another kind of person—an angry, destructive person. It had taken her a long time to conquer that darkness. She would never allow herself to become that person again. Never. And the only way she could guarantee that was by keeping Connor at arm’s length. Further, if possible.

  But it didn’t stop her watching him through the shop window as he worked on her sign.

  She opened the shop, she served customers, but that didn’t stop her noticing how efficiently he worked either, the complete lack of fuss that accompanied his every movement. It reminded her of how he used to draw, of the times they’d take their charcoals and sketch pads to one of the lookouts.

  She’d sit on a rock hunched over her pad, intent on capturing every single detail of the view spread out before her, concentrating fiercely on all she saw. Connor would lean back against a tree, his sketch pad propped against one knee, charcoal lightly clasped, eyes half-closed, and his fingers would play across the page with seemingly no effort at all.

  Their high school art teacher had given them identical marks, but Jaz had known from the very first that Connor had more talent in his little finger than she possessed in her whole body. She merely drew what was there, copied what was in front of her eyes. Connor’s drawings had captured something deeper, something truer. They’d captured an essence, the hidden potential of the thing. Connor had drawn the optimistic future.

  His hair glittered gold in the sun as he stepped down the ladder to retrieve something from his van.

  And what was he doing now? Painting sho
p signs? His work should hang in galleries!

  He turned and his gaze met hers. Just like that. With no fuss. No hesitation. She didn’t step back into the shadows of the shop or drop her gaze and pretend she hadn’t been watching. He would know. He pointed to the sign, then sent her a thumbs up.

  All that potential wasted.

  Jaz couldn’t lift her arm in an answering wave. She couldn’t even twitch the corners of her mouth upwards in acknowledgement of his silent communication. She had to turn away.

  When she’d challenged him—thrown out there in the silences that throbbed between them that she must be the last person he’d ever want to see, he hadn’t denied it.

  Her stomach burned acid. Coming back to Clara Falls, she’d expected to experience loss and grief. But for her mother. Not Connor. She’d spent the last eight years doing all she could to get over him. These feelings should not be resurfacing now.

  If you’d got over him you’d have come home like your mother begged you to.

  The accusation rang through her mind. Her hands shook. She hugged herself tightly. She’d refused to come home, still too full of pride and anger and bitterness. It had distorted everything. It had closed her mind to her mother’s despair.

  If she’d come home…but she hadn’t.

  For the second time that day, she ground back the tears. She didn’t deserve the relief they would bring. She would make a success of the bookshop. She would make this final dream of her mother’s a reality. She would leave a lasting memorial of Frieda Harper in Clara Falls. Once she’d done that, perhaps she might find a little peace…Perhaps she’d have earned it.

  She glanced back out of the window. Connor hadn’t left yet. He stood in a shaft of sunlight, haloed in gold, leaning against his van, talking to Richard. For one glorious moment the years fell away. How many times had she seen Connor and Richard talking like that—at school, on the cricket field, while they’d waited for her outside this very bookshop? Things should’ve been different. Things should’ve been very different.