Lizzie took another sip of her wine and then laughed aloud at what she was going to say. ‘So what exactly did you need my help with? Sounds like you’ve organised this down to the weather.’
‘If only I could order the sunshine too, I would have. I’ve had a little time on my hands. It’s all done.’
Of course it was. Lizzie knew Julia. She had a plan and she was executing it with military precision. Lizzie had never stuck to plans very much. In her experience, they usually came unstuck.
Julia grabbed the remote control and pointed it at Hugh Grant on the TV, still paused. ‘More Hugh or should we talk about Dan?’
Lizzie gave a little shake of her head. ‘Hugh. Definitely Hugh.’
The next scene in the movie unfolded. Lizzie could almost recite the dialogue in her sleep she’d seen it so many times.
‘Seen him lately?’ Julia mentioned, trying to sound casual.
‘No. He hasn’t had a film out in a while, has he?’
Julia jabbed the remote at the screen and the image paused again. ‘Funny. Very funny.’
‘I thought I was going to get rom-com therapy? Talking about Dan is not a rom-com. It’s a disaster movie.’
‘Oh, Lizzie.’
‘I can’t think about Dan anymore. It hurts my brain.’ And my heart.
‘You know he’s back at work, right in the thick of it with Windswept.’
‘That’s great. He needed to get back to it. When does all the work kick off?’
‘Mid February. Just after the wedding.’
The wedding. Lizzie knew she still had to get through that day. At least she would be occupying familiar territory. And, unlike anyone else there, she had a key to her office in case she wanted to hide.
The next day, blissfully still one of her R&R days, it was warm and clear and bright. Lizzie had slept for a full ten hours, had woken up in the same position she’d fallen asleep in, so she knew she’d had her fill of rest. Blissfully, Joe hadn’t returned so she still had the house to herself.
She brewed a coffee and slid open the doors to her deck, leaving them open to air the house. Her old cane chair welcomed her and she settled in for a Zen moment with the fresh air and the warbling magpies and the view.
‘Morning, doll! Got a spare one for me?’ Harri waved up at Lizzie from the driveway.
‘Of course, Harri, come on in.’
A few minutes later, Lizzie placed a steaming cup in Harri’s hands. She responded with a grateful sigh. Lizzie appreciated the chance to see to Harri, treat her a little. Harri’s own children, grown-up sons, lived in Adelaide and didn’t often visit their mother. Lizzie just couldn’t fathom it. If they’d spent more time with her, they’d know that her hip wasn’t getting any better and that she was clearly struggling with the increasing pain. Harri would never admit as such to Lizzie, but Lizzie could see it in her friend.
‘Where’s Joe this morning?’ Harri asked, with a curious glance at Lizzie.
‘He’s staying at Julia and Ry’s for a couple of days.’
‘That sounds interesting. You thinking you might get lucky?’ The old woman’s eyes gleamed with mischief.
‘If only. Julia scared him off to give me some peace and quiet. I love Stinkface, and it’s great to have him home, but…’
Harri nodded, her eyes trained on Lizzie. ‘But…he’s not the man you imagined living with at your age, is he?’
Lizzie almost choked on her coffee. That woman, she decided, was some kind of spooky. She had the unerring ability to cut right through and find the truth.
‘God, Harri. How do you do that?’
‘I have an expertly trained bullshit-meter. Too many years in politics, doll. I take it Julia figured out that Joe’s giving you the shits.’
‘Something like that. I’ve been flat-out at work and I’m buggered, to tell you the truth.’
‘Far too busy to see that handsome young man of yours, I suppose. I haven’t seen Dan around lately.’
Lizzie looked to the horizon and away from Harri’s perceptive gaze. Did nothing get past this woman?
‘I’ve been keeping my distance there, Harri.’
‘What’s wrong with him? Is he a bit dodgy?’
‘No.’ Far from dodgy.
‘Has he found someone else’s bed to slip his shoes under?’
Lizzie shook her head, frowned.
‘So, maybe it means he’s just not that into you.’
Lizzie laughed in relief, shook her head once again at Harri. ‘What did you say?’
‘I get around. I’ve seen Sex and the City.’
Lizzie leaned over and gave Harri a huge hug. ‘Harri, thanks for making me laugh.’ And making me think. ‘I really needed it today.’
Harri handed her empty cup to Lizzie. ‘Thanks for the cuppa. When you see Joe, tell him he owes me a crossword.’
‘Huh?’
‘While you been working, we’ve been doing the crossword in the paper every day. He’s whip-smart, that brother of yours.’
‘As are you, Harri.’
Lizzie stood at the top of the wooden walkway in the dunes, looking out to sea. She needed to get out there. It was too nice a day to be lying on the sofa watching movies. She needed to get out onto the beach. She hadn’t wriggled her toes in the sand for weeks and she needed to be in the water, let the waves wash her clean, clear her head. Recharge her rundown batteries.
A few steps onto the warm sand, Lizzie kicked off her thongs, dropped her sunglasses next to them, dropped her bottle of water on top, and tightened the velcro strap of her bodyboard around her right wrist.
As she walked towards the waterline, she took a look over her shoulder at the row of houses on the esplanade. Harri’s questions had made her feel twitchy, restless. Confused about Dan. She wondered if he was in there, inside his little green beach shack, which stood humble and proud, dwarfed almost into insignificance by Julia and Ry’s glass palace right next door to it. His place was now one of the few remaining original houses on this stretch of the coast.
Would it stay there for long?
Would he?
Lizzie picked up her steps and ran into the surf, the cool of the water bracing and invigorating as it hit her. Within a minute, she’d picked a perfect wave and launched onto it, propelled forward by its sheer force, skimming along on the white foam, a squealing smile she hadn’t felt in so long escaping her lips and shooting adrenalin right through her. As she gripped the top of the board, her elbows rested in front of her, she thought of nothing else but the rush, the wave, the sand looming fast in front of her. She didn’t turn her board to drop off the back of the wave, but let it carry her right onto the beach. When it jagged into the sand and stopped, she rolled off and lay on her back, lazily letting the next wave float her, her eyes squeezed shut against the blazing sunshine, her heart pounding at the pure thrill of the ride she’d just had.
When she caught her breath and opened her eyes, she realised something was blocking out the sun. Something tall and broad and in a wetsuit. Something reaching out his hand to help her to her feet.
‘Good wave?’
Lizzie lifted her forearm to shield her eyes, the sun behind Dan carving a silhouette of his frame. Dan took it as an attempt to reach out to him and when he leaned over and grabbed her hand, she let herself be pulled to her feet, dragging her bodyboard by its wrist strap with her.
‘First one of the day. An absolute ripper,’ she puffed, still trying to catch her breath. She took a good look at Mr Nine Kinds of Handsome. He was styled for bodyboarding, with a huge yellow board under one arm, a nose covered with sunscreen and a full ankle to wrist wetsuit clinging to him in all the places Lizzie was trying not to look at. She realised nine had just become ten.
‘I was just heading in myself,’ he said, and without trying to hide it, took a good long look over the curves of her wetsuit. The hot intensity of his gaze should have melted it right off her body.
A fleeting thought crossed her mind but she batted
it away. Physically, no one would know he’d broken his leg nearly six months before. Only he could be the judge of what he was capable of. It wasn’t her place to worry about it. Or ask him about it.
‘You done this before?’ Lizzie asked, cocking her head to the waves. His smile told her everything she needed to know and for the next hour, they bobbed around in the water like seals, flinging themselves on wave after wave, happy. Untroubled.
Dan figured this was almost the perfect day. Yeah, the waves were good, some of the best he’d ever ridden. The sun was warm and the sky was clear as a bell. But that wasn’t what was making the day so good. It was the sheer joy he saw on Lizzie’s face, the yell of schoolgirl delight he could hear above the roar of the water and the wind in his ears. It was seeing her have so much fun. And it did him in.
They turned back from the shoreline to wade out to the deeper water. The water was shallow for a long way, so the walk took a minute or two, until they hit the spot where the waves lapped at Dan’s waist and at the pink logo across Lizzie’s breasts. He felt the undertow of a receding wave ripple against his legs, trying to pull him out, but he planted his feet and stood firm. He looked at Lizzie. She’d felt it too.
‘One more for the road?’
‘Hell, yeah,’ she called back and they jagged the best wave so far. It threw them up, shot them forward and they rode in, skimming on the top of the swell, just a metre apart. Dan reached out to his right, and when Lizzie saw his outstretched fingers, she grabbed them. The foaming power of the wave carried them all the way to the sand, hand in hand, fingers gripping fingers, still holding on tight as they drifted to a stop in the shallows.
They stood, picked up their boards and made their way back up the beach. When Lizzie dropped hers and reached over her shoulder to pull the long strap attached to the zip of her wetsuit, Dan stopped. He heard the crunching of her zip as it splayed open at her back, and as she yanked her arms out of the black skin-tight material and rolled it down to her hips, he was faced with the sight of her body. Tanned, glistening with droplets of water, a hot-pink bikini barely covering her round and perfect breasts. Jesus H. Christ. Everything about her was damn near perfect.
He turned his face away and dropped to the sand, pulling one knee up in front of him, before turning his attention back out to the ocean. One more look at that bikini and he figured he’d be trying to pull it off with his teeth.
‘It sure is a million-dollar day today,’ she said to the wind as she sat next to him. She leaned back on the sand, her legs kicked out in front of her, her arms straight behind her, turning her face up to the sun. Her hair stood up in wet spikes all over her head, catching the sun at the edges. Her eyes had fluttered closed.
‘A what?’ he asked, distracted.
‘Some friends of mine mentioned it once and it’s stuck in my head. A million-dollar day is a day like this, when it’s warm and the sky doesn’t even have a cloud in it. The wind is gentle on your back but the waves are killers. When you look around and the water is sparkling like diamonds and you breathe it all in and it fills up your lungs and calms you from the inside. That’s a million-dollar day.’
Dan considered her description. ‘You forgot something.’
Lizzie popped her sunglasses on. ‘What did I forget?’
‘A million-dollar day must surely include something about sitting next to a pretty good-looking guy while looking like that in a pink bikini.’
Lizzie shot him a smile that lit up the sky.
‘Pretty good-looking, huh?’ Lizzie looked at him over the top of her sunnies. Her eyes took their shine from the clear sky and the blue, blue water.
‘And by that you mean…you?’ she said, teasing the words out.
Dan shrugged his shoulders. ‘I was being humble.’
Lizzie’s laugh cut straight through him. ‘As I said, a million-dollar day.’
A little way down the beach a scratch cricket match had appeared out of nowhere. Skinny-limbed boys and gangly girls, still young enough to obey their parents by wearing hats and sunscreen, had marked out a crease in the sand with a stick of driftwood, and were now batting and bowling for Australia. Middle Point was perfect for it, with a flat, wide beach making for a perfect pitch. The children’s cheers drifted down the beach, their happiness catching on the breeze and swirling around Dan and Lizzie.
‘So,’ Dan said, finally. He watched as a seagull floated in the air above them, then glided over the waterline, landing with a flutter of its wings right in front of them.
‘Your brother.’
CHAPTER
24
Lizzie stopped watching the cricket match. ‘What about Joe?’
‘I had a beer with him, last night. At Ry’s.’
‘You did, huh.’
Dan couldn’t tell from the tone of her voice if she was pleased about it or pissed about it. ‘Turns out he’s all right.’
Lizzie huffed, shook her head ruefully. ‘God, you would say that.’
‘What do you mean?’ Dan tried not to sound as confused as he felt. Didn’t she want him to like her brother?
‘You guys. You all stick together.’
Dan hadn’t been expecting to see Joe when he’d dropped in to Ry’s place the night before. Dan had been up to Adelaide for a few days to work from the head office of Blackburn and Son Developments. He’d managed to catch up with Anna over a coffee while he was there, and let her know how he was getting on. He’d passed on an invitation from Ry and Julia to attend the wedding, which she’d accepted with an embarrassed moan. She still hadn’t forgiven herself for her drunken behaviour at their house. And while he was enjoying being smack bang right back in his old role as Director of Special Projects, he hadn’t enjoyed being back in the city. The summer holiday thing seemed to have passed most people by. The city’s business district was still filled with its army of suits and stilettos, iPads and briefcases. Dan had found it totally fucking ridiculous to have to slip back into a suit and a tie in the middle of a blinding Adelaide heatwave, after spending so many months in shorts and thongs at the beach.
After squeezing in as many meetings and as much other business as he could into a few days, he’d packed up his laptop and some hard copy files and driven back down to the south coast. That’s the deal he’d struck with Ry. Dan was going to base himself in Middle Point for the duration of the Windswept project and beyond.
With all that in his head, he’d felt at a loose end when he’d arrived home the night before, and figured his best friend might be up for a quick ale. To his surprise, Joe had been there, eating dinner with Ry and Julia. There was something about the guy, when he stood and shook hands with Dan over the table, that was different. He wasn’t the same bloke from Christmas. Maybe it was contrition. Maybe being sucker-punched by a woman had something to do with it.
He knew how that felt.
The tennis ball from the nearby cricket match skittered past them on the sand, followed by a gangly kid running full pelt.
‘Elizabeth, I actually think your brother’s all right. Funny as hell. Smart.’
‘I’d go with smartarse, rather than smart.’ She let out a huge sigh. ‘He’s driving me crazy.’
‘What’s he done?’
‘Try living with him for the first time in seventeen years. I know he’s heartbroken and everything, but…’ Lizzie started counting off on her fingers. ‘He leaves his wet towels all over the bathroom floor. Never does a dish without being nagged. Leaves newspapers everywhere. And I can never find the TV remote control.’
‘Ah, the sibling stuff. Never had to deal with that myself.’
Lizzie turned to him with curious eyes. ‘No?’
‘Mum and Dad tried for years and years to have a baby. They lost one five years before me. He only lived for a few hours. They’d just about given up when I was born.’
A lightbulb went off in Lizzie’s head. Dan and Ry. Brothers in every way that counted. Now she understood why. ‘Your parents probably thought they’d
hit the jackpot when you came along.’
‘You saying something nice about me, Elizabeth?’
‘Aren’t you the perfect son as well as the perfect best friend?’
‘No one’s perfect.’ His voice was rough, suddenly unsure. Lizzie propped her sunnies on top of her head, needing to see clearly into his face. His smile had gone; a cloud had descended over him. What was meant as a teasing remark had obviously cut close to the bone. She didn’t respond, waiting for what would happen next. The change in his mood, from flirtatious to forbidding, had spooked her.
Dan shifted, his back stiffened. ‘There’s something I need to know, Lizzie. When I was in hospital. After the accident. Why didn’t you come and visit me?’
Lizzie stilled. Her arms goosebumped and she rubbed them quickly, grinding fine grains of sand into her skin, abrading it. She knew without looking that Dan’s gaze was on her. She stared out at the waves.
‘I was working, Dan. I figured the best way to help Ry and Julia, and you, was to hold the fort at the pub during all those weeks.’ Sure she’d kept the pub ticking over, but she’d dropped into bed every night in tears, frightened, confused about why she was worried sick about a man she barely knew.
‘And what about all those months I was here, last spring? Until you brought me some food from the pub, you never once came and saw me.’
This felt like a test but Lizzie had no idea about the criteria against which she was being judged. ‘Would you have let me in?’
Dan thought for a moment. ‘I don’t know.’
‘There are only so many door slams a girl can take, you know.’
Dan turned, fully facing her now. ‘And you’re doing it again. Putting a distance between us.’
‘Dan, it’s not—’
‘There’s something I need to know. What happened between us that night at the pub?’
God, this really was twenty questions. Was he making a list in his head of all the reasons he should stay away from her? Lizzie had enough of her own, without breaking her heart by thinking of all her failures when it came to Dan.
Someone Like You Page 24