by Penny Jordan
And with every passing second she felt him moving further and further away, taking with him any warmth and hope she’d ever felt in her heart.
He licked his lips, shucked his jacket into a more comfortable position, then turned over the engine with a steady hand.
This time as he drove her through the dark city streets he kept just below the speed limit. Already there was nothing between them bar space and time, and the wind whipping about her face only served to take away her tears.
As he pulled up at the end of Flinders Lane, Chelsea turned to him to…what? Apologise? Wish him well? Change her mind? Beg him to love her back?
But he kept his gaze dead ahead, his fingers clenched hard to the steering wheel, his jaw set like stone.
She slid from the car, grabbed her jacket and bag from the back seat, and had barely closed the door when his engine gunned and he was gone down the glistening city street until she had nothing but the sound of his revving engine to prove he’d ever even been there.
For a moment she felt a bond with the faceless Bonnie. She felt the pain that woman must have felt at having to watch this man slip through her fingers. Chelsea tried to console herself with the fact that she hadn’t lost two and a half years of her life before coming to the realisation that the man couldn’t be tamed.
But she wouldn’t worry any more about his past. For her future felt as bright and rosy and full of possibilities as the gutter beneath her feet.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
MID Saturday afternoon Damien was sitting on a large brown leather ottoman at the rear of Caleb’s favourite haunt, a dapper mirror-and-wood-infested bar tucked away secretly beneath Russell Street.
He’d been staring blindly at the half-melted ice cubes clinking around the bottom of his untouched Scotch for goodness knew how long when a familiar scent tickled at his nose. Something warm, and soft and homey.
He glanced up, enough of him expecting to find a beautiful caramel-blonde walking towards him that his skin warmed a degree and the hairs on the back of his neck rose.
But instead all he saw was a slick redhead passing for at least the third time that hour. She caught his eye, and he smiled. She was gorgeous, she deserved recognition and that was what he was here to do. To mingle with the plethora of gorgeous young things on offer. To move on from Chelsea London, who herself had been meant to mean no more to him than a scratch for his itch.
The redhead pulled up to supposedly fix her shoe and held eye contact, brazen as you like. He knew all it would take was a tilt of his head, a broadening of his smile, to bring her over, to begin the dance, but at the last second he looked away.
‘Since when did you become such a grumpy old man?’ Caleb asked as he threw himself onto the ottoman until he was lazing across it like some modern day Caligula.
Damien sniffed in deep, letting the scents of all the mixed perfumes, wash away all memory of Chelsea’s scent for good. ‘Since the day you came into my life and I realised I was to become an unpaid babysitter until my dying day.’
‘Funny. You know that redhead’s been giving you eye all afternoon.’
‘So she has.’ Damien brought his drink to his lips.
‘But she’s no hottie dog groomer, is she?’
Damien’s hand stilled, the smell of Scotch in his nose, the taste of it still missing from his lips. ‘I wouldn’t know,’ he said. ‘She may well be.’
‘You really like this girl, don’t you?’
‘I liked her well enough.’ Damien didn’t even pretend to not know to whom Caleb was referring. He licked his bottom lip and nodded, squinting out into the hazy room rather than looking Caleb in the eye, rather than giving away just how much he’d liked her.
‘Then what the hell are you doing sitting here moping with me when you could be elbow-deep in all that lovely warm, willing female flesh?’
‘That particular female flesh is not so willing any more.’
‘That was quick. What happened?’
‘I was honest with her.’
Caleb sucked a hiss of air through his teeth. ‘Bad move. What did you say?’
‘I told her I couldn’t give her any more than what we had.’
‘And what was that exactly?’
Damien opened his mouth to say fun and games, but he knew that was rubbish. He searched for the words to describe what he and Chelsea had found together. To pinpoint what it was about her that made it so easy for him to reject it out of hand. And he couldn’t. His mind felt bruised, making him unable to think straight about a lot of things.
‘I made it clear we ought to keep things casual. Knowing neither of us was in a place to promise more. It’s been a month since Bonnie, and Chelsea’s, well, she’s bloody neurotic.’
‘And what did she have to say about that?’
‘I thought…She thought…She told me where I could stick my offer.’ With that he brought his Scotch to his mouth and let its watered down bitterness sear his throat.
Then behind the resultant hum in his ears he heard Caleb laugh. So loud and so hard the ottoman began to shake. He turned to his friend and glared.
But Caleb just grinned back. ‘You poor devil.’
‘Excuse me?’
Caleb sat up, rested a hand upon his shoulder, looked him in the eye and said, ‘I’m thinking the hot get-back-on-the-horse cat lady has turned out to be the one.’
He waited for the punchline. For the jibe. But it never came. Caleb instead looked, if anything, envious.
‘The one what?’ Damien asked.
Caleb took a deep breath and seemed to search for patience. ‘When you left Bonnie, you never sought to drown your sorrows in a glass of Scotch. But since you met this girl, you’ve been distracted, you’ve been moody, you’ve been a right dullard socially. And it’s all because you’ve gone and accidentally found yourself the one woman in the world who was finally able to capture your imagination enough to pull you from the world of boring bliss in which we found ourselves born.’
It took about thirty seconds for Caleb’s words to stop echoing inside Damien’s head. ‘You’re dead wrong, mate. One woman, marriage, house and home…I can’t. If being a Halliburton taught me anything—’
‘Don’t go holding up your crazy parents as some kind of example, my friend. They’re madly in love and both half sloshed before dinner. And if it wasn’t for the number their divorce did on the two of you I would have run off with your sister years ago.’
Damien kept his mouth shut and let Caleb’s words sink in. Chelsea. The one. His sister?
‘You and Ava?’
Caleb smiled, though there was no roguish humour in his eyes. ‘We’re focussing on you right now, my friend.’
‘Right. Me. And Chelsea.’ The one.
He’d told her he didn’t want permanence, or exclusivity, because he’d thought he couldn’t give them. He hadn’t wanted to hurt her because he’d seen the way she was falling for him. But the truth was, he’d pulled back because he’d been falling for her too. And from what he’d learnt about her dating history, and her childhood, he knew she was just as jittery about the prospect of for ever as he was. And having never been in that predicament in his whole life he’d been trying his hardest to stop himself from getting hurt too.
When all the while she’d been there, offering herself. Offering a whole new world.
‘I’m a bloody fool.’
‘Nah, you’re just a man. But you’re also a Halliburton man and Halliburton men have a knack for getting everything they always wanted. So how about you stop cramping my style and get the hell out of here and go find your girl and get down on your knees and beg her to forgive you for being such a prat?’
Damien’s mind swirled so fast he could barely focus. ‘Don’t you need a lift home?’
‘Damien. Leave now, before I stick a boot in your butt for making me feel so syrupy sweet I might puke.’
Caleb stood then and reached out to take Damien’s hand, helping him stand. At the last moment they
hugged, in a manly fashion, thumping fists on one another’s backs. But it was enough for Damien to know that Caleb wasn’t entirely the blackguard he made himself out to be.
He too was a man content enough on the island to himself, but who would give away every speck of sand if it meant truly finding the woman he could love for ever.
As he pushed blindly past transient, easy men and women that until now he’d always thought just like him to get to the front door, to fresh air and sunshine he so desperately craved, he patted his pockets for his car keys, his mobile phone.
They were all he needed where he was going. That and a whole lot of luck on his side.
Chelsea sat on a swinging love seat on the front porch of the ramshackle wooden house that Kensey and Greg had bought with the money she’d paid them for Kensey’s half of the apartment. Kids’ bikes lay forgotten on the patchy lawn beside her Pride & Groom van. Hanging plants made a jungle of the roof above her.
She’d rolled her mobile over and over in her hands so many times it was warm to the touch. Not that she wanted to call anyone. It just made her feel connected to the world she’d left behind in the city.
‘That’s the last thing you need,’ she said aloud as she shoved it into the back pocket of her faded jeans.
She’d signed the bank-loan papers and sent them off. She’d put Phyllis completely in charge at the salon for the day. She’d made the beginnings of what would be many changes to her life to give herself the illusion she had it back under her control.
Now what she needed was fresh air, space, new scenery. And this was the place for it. This place that felt more like home than any other she’d ever known. It was true. Real. Messy. Honest. Unpretentious. And the complete opposite of Damien Halliburton’s world of fast and furious bright and shiny living. If she had to pick one place in the world to lick her wounds and get over him, and to get over the trust she’d so naively put into the possibility of him, this was it.
Suddenly Hurley kids galore spilled out of every available doorway fracturing the peace. ‘Auntie Chelsea!’ one said. ‘Have you seen my Spiderman pyjamas?’
Another asked, ‘Can you give me a piggyback?
‘What did you bring me for my birthday?’ said the third.
‘Ah, no, later and that’s a surprise,’ she said, giving each of them a quick kiss before they were gone around the side of the house as quickly as they’d arrived.
Kensey came out of the kitchen wiping her hands on a tea towel.
‘My sister, the little woman,’ Chelsea said, moving over to make space for her.
Kensey sat. ‘Are you ever coming inside?’
A gust of wind swirled a pile of autumn leaves down the dirt driveway. ‘In a minute.’
‘It’s getting cool. Dinner will be ready in forty odd minutes. And the kids keep asking why you’re frowning.’
Knowing she could never fool Kensey as well as she could fool herself, Chelsea dropped her head into her hands and frowned to her heart’s content. She revelled in it, feeling as sorry for herself as she wanted. ‘I’m frowning because I’m miserable,’ she sulked.
‘Of course you are. But good riddance to bad rubbish, I say. Who needs a handsome, hunky, rich guy who cooks and isn’t scared of a little illness lusting after them? You did the right thing cutting him off. Feel better?’
Chelsea lifted her head and somehow managed to laugh. ‘Infinitely,’ she lied. ‘Thanks ever so much for your understanding.’
‘He did make you glow, though, pet.’
‘Kensey—’ she warned.
‘Well, he did. Made you glow and glisten and act all gooey and girly and give me hope that one day I’ll be able to get you off my hands for good.’
‘If you truly do want to get me off your hands for good, then you’d do better than to say things like that while I’m in the process of moving on.’
Kensey drew her in for a hug. ‘You’re right. Sorry. You will feel better. Eventually. Time wounds all heals and all that. And until then, tonight…there’s cake. And vodka. And a Hugh Jackman movie marathon on the telly.’
‘Thank goodness for you,’ Chelsea said, feeling some small measure of relief that her itinerant father and absentee mother had given her this woman in her life at least. Everything else would come together eventually. Her business, her love life, her broken heart.
Hopefully.
The sudden grumble of a high-octane engine had them facing the road. When Chelsea saw Damien’s sports car pull into the driveway she had to blink twice to make sure she hadn’t conjured him up from her gloomy imaginings.
‘Holy cow,’ Chelsea said.
‘Lookie here,’ Kensey said.
‘Nice wheels,’ Greg said, coming outside to see what the noise was about. ‘Who’s that?’
‘That would be Chelsea’s Damien,’ Kensey said.
‘Ooh,’ Greg said. ‘He’s flash, Chels. Handsome fella too. So why did you dump him again?’
Kensey answered for her. ‘I believe the theory on this one was do unto others before they do unto you.’
Chelsea heard their words as though they were coming from the other side of the world. Despite having let him go, seeing him again in the flesh had every part of her straining towards the car, and the man getting out of it.
The man in the sleek black suit, the crisp baby-blue shirt, the silk tie that likely cost more than her whole outfit, with the dark preppy hair lifting sexily in the breeze. The man she’d watched drive away only the night before, certain she’d never see him again. The man who was behind the fact that she now sat there with unwashed hair, red-rimmed eyes and an aching chest.
‘Kensey, do you know anything about this?’ she whispered loudly, but Kensey just shrugged, and snuck towards Greg, who put an unconscious arm around her waist. ‘Then how on earth did he find me?’
And more importantly, why?
Damien shut the door, straightened his jacket, then turned and found the three of them watching him. He lifted his hand to give a short wave, then let it drop.
Chelsea motioned with her eyes for Kensey and Greg to make themselves scarce, but Kensey just smiled all the bigger.
Damien slid his keys into his trouser pocket and headed up the path. He ran a hand through his hair. She’d never seen him looking so nervous before. Or so adorable. And completely out of place in the rustic setting as she’d known he would be.
But he was there. And that was something.
She suddenly didn’t know what to do with her hands. To wring them, cross her arms, or slide them into the back pockets of her jeans. In the end she let them hang at her sides in loose fists.
Damien stopped at the foot of the steps and looked up at her. His blue eyes so achingly familiar and beautiful they managed to create a new series of cracks in her already fragmented heart.
‘What are you doing here, Damien?’ She was dead pleased when her voice came out without shaking.
His mouth curved into a half-smile and he said, ‘I was passing through. You know there’s a wine-tasting festival down the road?’
Well… Her eyebrows shot skyward and she had a whole slew of retorts to shoot back at him despite the audience before he held up a hand, shook his head and pinned her with the most serious gaze she’d ever seen him use.
‘Wipe that last statement. Please,’ he said. ‘I drove up here without really knowing what I would say when I got here. So let me start again.’
She shrugged.
His lungs filled and deflated before he said, ‘I’m here to see you.’
Her heart rate kicked up a notch. Her long since empty well of hope filled so fast it threatened to spill over. But she couldn’t let him see. He hadn’t said he felt any differently than he had twenty-four hours before. ‘How on earth did you find me?’
‘I looked your sister up in the phone directory of a public phone booth in town.’ He glanced at Kensey and nodded. ‘A paper one. Sometimes technology isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.’
‘You w
on’t find any fancy technology here,’ Greg said. ‘Damien, right? I’m Greg Hurley and this is my wife Kensey.’
Thus invited, Damien sidled up the stairs, stopping at Chelsea’s side.
‘Chelsea’s told me a lot about both of you,’ he said.
She felt his warmth, smelled the faint rays of autumn sunshine clinging to his clothes as though loath to let go. She closed her eyes and leaned as far away from him and his magnetic scent as she could.
Then the Hurleys’ collie chose that exact moment to bolt around the side of the house, run straight to the newcomer and leap, his great muddy paws landing smack bang in the centre of Damien’s shirt.
‘Oh, Lord. Slimer, down!’ Kensey cried out.
Chelsea grabbed the dog by the collar, but he lived up to his name and slobbered all over her hand.
‘He’s fine,’ Damien said, rubbing hard hands over the dog’s ears and grinning from ear to ear. ‘Slimer?’ he said to Kensey. ‘Ghostbusters fans?’
Kensey’s face broke into a matching grin. ‘You bet. The reason I went out with Greg in the first place was because he reminded me of a young Bill Murray. Do you have a dog?’
He laughed. ‘What’s with you girls and dogs? Chelsea asked me the same thing on our first date.’
Chelsea felt as if she were in the twilight zone. She was so confounded she wasn’t quick enough to stop Kensey from telling her tale.
‘When we were little we spent a few months living out this way with a friend of our dad’s. He was nice. His house was clean. He could cook. Which made me fall in love with him as only a hungry eight-year-old can. But for Chelsea it was all about his dog. A fluffy grey mongrel of a thing that only ate what we ate. That always looked and smelled worse five minutes after a bath. And who slept on the end of Chelsea’s bed and followed her around like he was her guardian angel. She’s had a thing for dogs, and the people who value them, ever since.’
Damien continued rubbing Slimer behind the ear, but his gaze was all for Chelsea. It was a nice gaze. A warm gaze. A gaze full of promise that he’d assured her again and again was not there. Glutton for punishment that she was, she gazed right on back. She needed her head read.