No Place Like You

by Marnie St Clair

  All up, things were a lot better than they had been a week ago. She had a job. She had a fridge full of food. She even had her own postbox.

  She had … whatever it was that she had with Josh. Something? Nothing? Just one devastating kiss? She’d hoped that kiss was the start of something, but she hadn’t seen him since then. He hadn’t been into the café, hadn’t come to Mirabook. He knew where to find her, so if he hadn’t sought her out, she could only assume it was because he didn’t want to see her.

  She’d thought about walking across the paddocks to his place, but the truth was, Louise’s words were still troubling her. She told herself that the idea that she was in any way bad for Josh was ridiculous, but part of her must believe it, because she was hesitant to seek him out.

  But it wasn’t going to be possible for him to avoid her forever. Sooner or later, they were going to see each other again. It was inevitable. Yarrow just wasn’t that big.

  The post office was half a block from the café, and she dropped in on her way to her car. Her post office box was empty. She’d called her accountants and told them to forward her files to their hearts’ content, but they hadn’t arrived yet.

  Once home, she walked through to the kitchen. Every available surface was strewn with old sheets she’d found in various linen cupboards and planned to decorate her bedroom with. She’d dyed them a soft apricot, and was half-way through stencilling ornate silver-grey patterns on top. She’d finish them tonight hopefully, but there was something else she had to do first.

  She pulled her phone from her handbag. Saxon picked up after a couple of rings.

  ‘Lily! You must be psychic.’

  She smiled into the phone. It was good to hear his voice again. Really good. She’d been stupid not to call sooner. ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘Guess who’s back in town?’

  It took her a minute to process it, then she squealed with joy. ‘Saxon! You’re back?’

  ‘Just landed. Give me a couple of hours, and I’ll be around at your place with pad Thai and a nice bottle of white.’

  ‘Oh, that sounds really, really good, Sax.’ A friend, she had a friend! ‘But I’m not there. My house is not even my house anymore.’

  ‘What? What’s happened? Where are you?’

  ‘You know how dad was sick? He died three months ago. And the court case? It went against us. We lost everything. Practically everything. I’m at Mirabook.’

  He was silent a moment, then let out an angry gust of air. ‘Jeez, Lily. You didn’t think to let me know?’

  ‘Things have just been really sucky, you know?’

  ‘What, did you think I’d stop taking your calls or something?’ He sounded offended.

  Had she been worried Saxon, like everyone else, would dump her because she wasn’t ‘fun’ anymore? Maybe there had been a little bit of that in there. She would have found that devastating, so she hadn’t risked it. No wonder he was offended.

  ‘It’s not like you haven’t seen me at my worst,’ he grumbled.

  It was true. When she’d first met Saxon in their first year at the College of Fine Arts, he’d been a mess. A beautiful mess. Talented but lacking a firm foundation, with a self-destructive impulse that got in the way of him achieving something truly spectacular. She hadn’t been much different, and something in them had bonded. ‘My bad. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Okay,’ he said eventually. ‘But if it happens again, I’m going to steal your best set of charcoals and use them up sketching pictures of Tony Abbott.’

  She laughed. God, she’d missed him. He was still pissed off, but if he was back to making totally nonsensical threats, she was forgiven. ‘What are you doing back here anyway?’

  ‘Restructure. Last in, first out.’

  ‘That sucks. That was your dream job.’

  ‘Paris is cool, but honestly? I’m glad to be back. One second.’ She heard him dealing with the cab driver. ‘So, are you sure you’re okay?’ he continued.

  ‘Yeah. Of course. All good.’

  A pause. ‘No, you’re not. What’s going on?’

  He knew her too well. She’d promised herself no white lies, but where to start with everything that had happened since she’d seen him last? From the beginning. She told him most of it. It didn’t come out neat and tidy, because it wasn’t neat and tidy in her head. Some thoughts she hadn’t even attempted to put into words, but she tried to explain it to him. About how she’d felt when she’d realised she had nothing—not just no money, but no family, no friends, no plans for the future. How she’d arrived at Mirabook and felt like she’d come home. About how she wanted to stay, change her life. About this group of women she saw everyday who hated her and wanted her gone.

  ‘Is that boy still there?’ he asked when she’d finished. ‘Your neighbour?’

  So he’d noticed she hadn’t mentioned Josh.

  ‘Yes.’ She walked over to one of the sheets, traced a finger around the stencilled pattern. ‘He hates me too.’

  ‘I’m sure he doesn’t.’

  She wasn’t. She wasn’t sure at all.

  ‘If he dares to hate you, I’m going to steal his charcoals too. Except I’ll use his on Charles and Camilla.’

  She laughed sadly. ‘I’m pretty sure Josh doesn’t have charcoals. He doesn’t want me here, Sax. No one does.’

  He grew serious. ‘Look, Lily, that’s your place, and you have every right to stay there. Don’t let them run you out of town if you don’t want to go.’

  Easy to say. Not as easy to live through.

  ‘What’s your heart telling you to do?’ he pushed.

  ‘To stay.’

  ‘So, stay. You’re stronger than running away.’

  ‘Am I?’ It didn’t feel like that. Most of the time, she felt far from strong.

  ‘You’re still there, aren’t you?’

  She smiled. Saxon had a way with words. ‘I suppose I am,’ she agreed. ‘Anyway, enough about me. What are you going to do now?’

  ‘Look for another job. Eventually. But I got a fairly decent payout. I want to spend some time on my art first.’

  ‘Come and stay with me.’

  ‘Really? At the famous and infamous Mirabook? I’d love to. Give me a couple of days to get organised, and I’ll be there.’

  She ended the call feeling a thousand per cent better. She hadn’t realised how much the dislike which had permeated almost every one of her social interactions over the past year was getting to her. But at least she had one friend in this world, and he was coming to stay with her.

  And he’d helped her make up her mind. She’d been right to come here. She loved this place. So she was staying. For good.

  But she needed some kind of plan. The job at the café was a great stop-gap, but it was only temporary. Going forward, she’d have to find some way to incorporate the work she loved into her new life. There must be something she could do to make it work. She had Mirabook. She had her ability to create, her capacity for hard work. She just had to find a way to bring it all together. There was an idea in there somewhere, floating around in her mind, but she couldn’t quite grasp it.

  She needed to move, to think. Giving the sheets she’d planned to work on a last look and an apology, she stepped out through the French doors into fading afternoon light.

  No one who owned this glorious house could really be poor. This property was part of everything she wanted. An integral part of it. She wanted to restore Mirabook to its former glory.

  And the gardens, she thought, wandering through them. The gardens at the front and sides of the house were formal, but out the back, everything was functional. Beyond the little courtyard was a kitchen garden, and beyond that, an orchard full of delicate blossoming apples and pears. She’d always been here in summer, so she’d never seen it like this. So pretty.

  The potager was over-run with weeds, but she could still make out the boundaries of the French-style patch. With a bit of work, it would be as attractive and productive as it used
to be. Further down, she greeted the apple and the pear trees with a hand to each trunk. The stately old orchards needed some TLC, but they were still alive.

  It was all here. The elements of what she wanted. She just needed that light bulb moment.

  A muffled banging sound reached her ears. She followed it down through the gardens to the huge cypress trees that ran along the boundary between garden and farm. Ducking and weaving her way through low branches until she reached the fence, she saw the source of the noise—a tall, broad figure across the paddock.

  Josh.

  She vaguely remembered him talking about some sheep and a fence. Vaguely remembered him talking about fixing it.

  So here he was, across a paddock from her. She stood for a moment, hands on the wooden rail in front of her. She wasn’t sure what was happening between the two of them, if anything, but she wasn’t going to avoid him just because he’d been avoiding her. In fact, now might be a good time to get a few things clarified.

  Chapter 7

  Josh drove the picket into the hard dirt. The force reverberated through his hands and arms, through his entire body. Raising the post driver, he brought it down again. It was hard physical labour, and he needed it. Big time.

  He wasn’t surprised when he looked up and saw Lily walking across the paddock towards him. Of course, he hadn’t known she’d seek him out, but since he was fixing the fence only a few hundred metres from Mirabook, he’d hoped. If she hadn’t come to him, he would have gone to her.

  He was ready.

  Avoiding her, avoiding the café where he usually ate lunch, he hadn’t seen her in three days. Not since they’d kissed, and it had swept through him like a bloody bushfire. How many women had he kissed? Lots. He’d never felt anything close to that.

  Delayed, pent-up, unrequited lust or something. He was two years older than her, and those last couple of summers had been … challenging. It hadn’t occurred to him to mind at the time. He’d been so totally under her spell, he would have bled himself dry for her. Blue balls were nothing. He’d certainly made up for his teenage abstinence since then. Hadn’t ever found anyone who did to him what Lily did though. Just by existing.

  He couldn’t deny the force of his response had shaken him. The days deliberately avoiding her had been spent figuring out how to deal with it.

  The first and, he had to concede, possibly best option was to stay the hell away from her. Avoid her as he had been doing. At the end of the month, he’d tell her she had to sell. At which point, Lily would leave Yarrow, go back to Sydney where she belonged, and he wouldn’t have to deal with it—with her—anymore. The problem with that plan was that while she might leave, she would never leave him. He knew that now. If he was honest, he hadn’t really stopped thinking about her over the past ten years, and now that he’d reopened Pandora’s box by kissing her, it was only going to be worse.

  So, on to Plan B. He wasn’t naïve about women and their response to him, and he’d seen Lily looking. She’d been right there in that kiss with him, just as hungry for him. She was here for a month. If he used the time wisely, this could be his chance to rid himself of her for good. Work her out of his system. Familiarity was supposed to breed contempt, right? Well, he planned on being pretty damn familiar pretty damn often. By the time Lily was gone, she should be well and truly exorcised.

  But this plan also came with a problem. He was going to have to be careful, or the whole thing could backfire. Since she’d first reappeared, her vulnerability had lowered his defences. He’d always been a sucker for a damsel in distress. Anyone in distress, really. But while he was bringing her sandwiches, finding her work and reconnecting her electricity, he’d forgotten that she was dangerous. Fact was, he wanted her like he’d always wanted her. So much it clouded his judgement. So much it would drive him insane if he let it.

  So he had to be smart. Stay in control the whole time. Get what he needed out of anything they started. Because if it didn’t work out the way he hoped … He shuddered to think what the rest of his life was going to be like.

  He paused a minute to watch her approach, pretty in an outfit of blue boots, dark grey pants and a soft-looking silver knit. It wasn’t like he spent a great deal of time and energy assessing women’s fashion—what was underneath was a hell of a lot more interesting—but he always noticed with Lily. With her face and her body, she could easily have come across as a vain, self-absorbed supermodel, but she never did. She didn’t play down her looks exactly, but she didn’t play them up either. Her clothes were unconventional, pretty and playful. And, he acknowledged, surprisingly practical. He couldn’t begin to imagine her strutting around in stilettos.

  Dragging his gaze away, he resumed his work. She didn’t attempt to greet him over the noise of the post driver, just wrapped her arms around one of the wooden fence posts he’d just dug in, and propped her chin on top, watching him as he worked.

  It wasn’t a warm afternoon, but the work was heavy enough that he’d stripped off his shirt. He could feel her eyes on him. He knew women liked his big, well-muscled body, and he wasn’t above using it to get what he wanted from Lily.

  When he’d finished with the posts, he returned the post driver to the tray of his good-as-new ute, and extracted wire, clippers and a strainer.

  ‘Why does Helen hate me?’ she asked as he returned with them to the fence.

  He flicked her a glance. Not what he’d been expecting her to ask. ‘I wouldn’t worry about it.’

  ‘Kind of hard not to, the way she stares daggers at me.’

  ‘It hasn’t got anything to do with you.’

  ‘How could it not have anything to do with me?’ She let go of the post, propped folded arms up on top instead. ‘You know why, don’t you?’

  ‘Don’t worry about it.’

  ‘I tried but it didn’t work. If I have to put up with it every day, don’t I deserve to know why?’

  Yeah, maybe she did. He threaded wire through the strainer, used the ratchet handle to tighten it. ‘You sure you want to know?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He flicked another glance towards her, to the dark velvet-brown eyes staring back at him. ‘Your mum had an affair with her husband.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Oh indeed. Not much else she could say. And not much she could do about the fact that Helen hated her.

  It didn’t help that Lily looked like Elisabeth. A lot like Elisabeth. She’d laid her head on top of the post and was looking pensively out over the fields of golden tussocky grass in front of her. He took a moment to drink in her delicate bone structure, centuries of upper-class breeding evident in every classic line.

  Frowning, because he could look at her all day, he wrenched his eyes away and went to work with the wire again. When he’d finished and bent to cut another length, she spoke again.

  ‘What happened?’

  Why she cared so much about Helen’s opinion, he didn’t know. ‘I don’t know the details. It happened ages ago, before you were born. Your mum was here for the summer, like always, and they had some kind of fling. It didn’t last, but Helen’s husband left anyway. Headed for the coast, if I remember right.’

  ‘That’s horrible,’ she said, sharp and sad at the same time.

  ‘Not good,’ Josh agreed. ‘But nothing to do with you. So don’t let it get to you.’

  But it was, obviously. She’d returned her gaze to the view, and there was something so wistful about her, about that head resting on the post. Not fair, he thought. He wasn’t about to start defending a Schofield, but Lily wasn’t her mother, and she wasn’t the one who’d slept with another woman’s husband. It wasn’t fair she should be copping the fall-out.

  ‘Lily.’ He waited until her eyes met his. ‘Not your fault.’

  She looked away again, let out a breath and nodded her head slightly. ‘At least I get it now,’ she added softly.

  ‘Any other questions?’ Anything to stop her looking so sad.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Why d
oes Katie hate me?’

  Not the question he would have chosen. He took his time tying the wire to the post. ‘Can’t figure that one out for yourself?’ he asked eventually.

  It took her a moment. Then she raised her head off her arms and looked at him, horrified. ‘You’re not together, are you?’

  ‘No,’ he answered curtly.

  ‘Okay. Well, why then?’

  ‘We’re not together, but we did spend a night together not that long ago.’

  ‘Oh.’

  He kept his eyes on the wire in front of him, strained it vigorously. ‘It was casual. It was only ever going to be casual. I made myself pretty clear—before, during and after—that it was a one-off.’ He paused, hands still for the moment. ‘I’m not sure she got the message.’

  ‘Poor Katie.’

  ‘Not my finest hour.’ He moved along the fence, clipped and threaded another section of wire through the strainer. ‘It wasn’t the first time she’d … let her interest be known. I usually turned her down, but that night, I didn’t.’ He looped the end of the wire, tucking it away carefully. ‘Like I said, not my finest hour.’

  What else could he say? He genuinely regretted sleeping with Katie. She was the one who’d pushed for it, and he’d been as clear as he knew how about where they stood, but he still blamed himself for allowing it to happen. He’d known it meant more to her than it should, more than it did to him. It was always going to end badly, he should have stuck to saying no. He’d ended up hurting her for no good reason.

  ‘There’s really nothing between you?’

  ‘Not from my side. Nothing against Katie. She’s a great girl. I just don’t feel that way about her.’

  ‘Okay.’ She paused. ‘Given what she walked in on the other day, I suppose that explains the death glares from her.’