Chapter One

​

Blake’s luxury sedan all but limped into Callenbrook, his home town in rural Victoria. The home town he hadn’t visited in over a decade. If he’d had his way, it would’ve been another decade before he’d returned.

   His nose curled and his scowl deepened. His grandmother’s voice sounded through him. Be careful the wind doesn’t change.

   An old wives’ tale, Gran.

   What he wouldn’t give, though, to hear her voice one last time.

   Don’t think about that now. Unclenching his fingers from around the steering wheel, he tapped them against it instead and considered travelling the extra thirty minutes into Bendigo and getting his tyre fixed there. Ever since he was fifteen years old he’d dubbed Callenbrook ‘Red Neck Falls’, and the fewer people he had to engage with here, the better.

   With a growl, he turned and headed into the town centre, pulled in at the auto mechanic’s workshop. Joey Lockyer came strolling out from the inside. As soon as Blake emerged from the tinted-windowed interior, though, Joey looked as if he’d like to turn around and head back inside. With a deep breath, he set his shoulders and kept moving in Blake’s direction. Blake and Joey had never had any issues with each other. Hopefully they wouldn’t now either.

   Joey pointed to one of the front wheels.

   ‘Run flats,’ Blake said.

   Why the hell hadn’t he specified his rental car have an actual spare tyre that he could change himself rather than run flats he’d have to get replaced by somebody else if they were punctured?

   ‘We’ve one of those in stock. You’re lucky. I’ve a few jobs in front of you, though.’

   ‘What time you want me to come back and collect it?’

   He waited for Joey to shrug and say, ‘Never.’ Waited for him to tell Blake to take his business elsewhere.

   ‘I’ll be hard-pressed to get it done this afternoon. Tomorrow morning would be more convenient. It’ll be ready by eight.’

   Convenient for whom? Though, as the funeral wasn’t until ten, he couldn’t claim it as an inconvenience to himself. He was grounded here until after the reading of his grandmother’s will.

   He tossed Joey the keys. ‘Want me to pay up front?’

   Joey huffed out what might’ve been a laugh. ‘Tomorrow will be fine, Blake. Don’t forget, any time after eight.’

   Pulling his duffel bag from the boot, Blake slung it over his shoulder and, with a nod, set off on the six-block walk to his grandmother’s duplex. Before he was out of earshot he heard one of Joey’s workers say, ‘Who was that?’

   ‘Blake Carlisle. Iris Day’s grandson.’

   ‘Finally here in the flesh, then?’

   Blake’s nose curled. Man, he hated this place.

   Eight minutes later, Blake stood out the front of his grandmother’s house. He stared, unable to force his legs forward to open the gate. Even though he knew curtains would be twitching at the windows in the neighbours’ houses.

   He glanced briefly at the house next door, the duplex that shared a wall with his grandmother’s, and moistened his lips. Nina hadn’t taken his phone calls since February, hadn’t answered his texts. Damn it. The one thing he needed to fix while he was here was that.

   His gaze return to Gran’s. A decade. While he’d seen his grandmother more regularly than that, he hadn’t been home in ten years. And nothing had changed.

   You’ve changed.

   And your grandmother is dead.

   The gate, the garden, the house, all blurred. His grandmother was no longer with them. That was a change too big to comprehend. As soon as her funeral was over, though, and her estate settled, nothing would make him step foot back in Callenbrook again. Nothing.

   You going inside or are you going to start howling on the front lawn?

   His therapist would probably advise him to go ahead and howl, would tell him it was cathartic. The neighbours would love it.

   Forcing his legs forward, he pulled out the spare key he hadn’t used in a decade and he let himself inside. Closing the door, he didn’t howl even though nobody could see him, but, dumping his duffel bag to the floor, he sagged back, the door reassuringly solid at his back.

   The place was wrong. As if without Gran inside it, it made no sense. He really could’ve sat on the floor then and bawled his eyes out. Instead he did as Gran would’ve expected—he opened the curtains and then the windows, and took himself off for a shower.

   Showered and unpacked—not that he’d packed much as he didn’t expect to be in Callenbrook for more than a few days—he ambled into the kitchen and found a fresh loaf of bread on the counter, milk, vegetables and a steak in the refrigerator along with a six-pack of beer. And a few cans of the lemonade his grandmother had favoured.

   Nina? Glancing at their connecting wall, he realised he had no idea where she now worked or what time she’d be home. For the last decade Nina had been her mother’s full-time carer, but Johanna had died back in February. And he hadn’t made it home for the funeral.

   Even if she wanted to avoid him, even if she refused to forgive him, he and Nina still needed to talk.

   His gut churned; bile burned his throat. He shouldn’t have left it so long to come back. He should’ve returned as soon as he was able.

   A familiar band tightened about his chest, making it cramp, and his breathing grew hard and laboured. Closing his eyes, he focused on counting his breaths, regulating them, until the grip loosened. Hooking out a chair at the kitchen table, he pulled out his phone and played a game of Tetris. When he was done, his breathing had almost returned to normal, his mind calmer again.

   He made a sandwich even though he wasn’t hungry because low blood-sugar levels wouldn’t help. And he wasn’t losing the plot. Not now.

   He didn’t hear Nina come home, nor did he hear her move about next door. He rapped out their old signal on the kitchen wall a couple of times, but received nothing in reply. Not even a curt two-knock ‘Not now’ that had been their standard language.

   Yeah, a decade ago.

   Maybe so, but she wouldn’t have forgotten.

   At a little after five he couldn’t stand it any longer. Grabbing a lemonade from the fridge, he headed outside to the back veranda, stopping short when he saw Nina sitting in a vinyl armchair in a startling shade of electric blue at her end of the veranda, staring out at her garden. Dragging in a breath, he forced his legs towards her, stopping at the knee-high iron railing that separated the two properties. ‘I didn’t think you were home.’

   She didn’t turn to look at him, but continued to stare out at her garden. He glanced at it too and his brows shot up. Nina had loved green things and gardening ever since Gran had put a trowel in her hand as a five-year-old and set her up with her own little plot.

   He’d known she’d extended her garden, but this was amazing! Native trees and shrubs wound among raised garden beds that he knew would be filled with vegetables. The effect was an odd combination of wild and ordered.

   ‘The garden is looking great.’ He sat in the matching chair on his side of the railing, his heart beating too hard. ‘You didn’t hear my knock on the wall?’

   ‘Am I supposed to come running whenever you knock?’

   Right. Wrong opening. He should’ve said something like, ‘Isn’t this awful?’ or ‘How are you holding up?’ because she’d loved his grandmother every bit as much as he had.

   He ached to reach across and hug her, kiss her cheek, but the frosty eyebrow she’d briefly raised had warned him not to try it. His stomach hollowed out. He concentrated on his breathing and stared at the garden on his grandmother’s side of the fence.

   Nina had obviously taken over Gran’s garden too—the native plants and shrubs irresistible to the birds who made a cacophony of sound in the dusk of the late August afternoon—but the rose garden his grandmother had so loved still proudly stood at its centre. Staring at it now made him ache and throb.    ‘You didn’t hear me arrive?’

   ‘I heard you were back in town before you left Joey’s workshop.’

   He shook his head. This town. Was that when she’d ducked across with those few groceries? Was that her dinner in his refrigerator? She might be giving him the cold shoulder, but she’d cared enough to make sure he had something to eat.

   ‘You didn’t think to come on over?’

   ‘What for? You’re a grown-up, aren’t you? Besides, I was too busy getting over my shock that you’d actually turned up.’ She raised her glass in his direction in a mock toast.

   He went as cold as the ice that clinked in her glass. ‘You didn’t think I would?’ Had she honestly thought he’d stay away and leave her to deal with everything?

   ‘Showing up isn’t what you do.’

   Silently he swore. And swore. ‘Look, Nina, about your mum’s funeral…’

   That eyebrow rose again when he hesitated. ‘Go on. My mum’s funeral…?’

   When he didn’t she gave a mirthless laugh. ‘My mother, as in the woman you called Auntie Jo? The woman who took you under her wing and was a second mother to you because your own parents were miserable excuses for human beings? That’s the woman you’re referring to?’

   ‘Nina, I…’ But how to explain when he could barely explain it to himself.

   ‘You didn’t come back home once in ten years to see her. Not once. And you knew that, unlike your grandmother, she couldn’t travel.’

   For the last seven years he’d treated his grandmother to an annual European holiday—so he could see her at least once a year and make sure she was doing okay. He’d have done the same for Auntie Jo and Nina. Jo’s illness, though, had made that impossible.

   He hated Callenbrook with the fire of a thousand suns. He’d never wanted to return to the godforsaken place. Nina had always told him she understood.

   Until February. When she’d stopped talking to him altogether.

   Fact was he had tried to come home for the funeral. His hands clenched at the memory. He’d made it as far as Singapore airport before the pain in his chest and the drumming in his head had overpowered him. The shortness of his breath. The struggle for air. The way his left arm had tingled before going numb.

   He’d collapsed, too dizzy and weak to communicate, unable to tell anyone what was wrong with him. A part of him had watched from afar as the cabin crew had called for an ambulance and he’d been raced to hospital. He’d thought he’d die before they arrived. A heart attack at thirty. Rare but not unheard of.

Except it hadn’t been a heart attack. It had been a panic attack.

   Prior to experiencing one for himself first-hand, he’d had no real idea what a panic attack involved. He hadn’t known the symptoms could be so severe. He hadn’t realised how debilitating they could be. He’d still been intent on getting the next flight to Australia, but no sooner had he verbalised that thought to the doctor than he’d found himself in the grip of another panic attack. Apparently telling yourself to snap out of it, that you were strong and successful and had overcome adversity before, didn’t make an iota of difference. Panic attacks didn’t care how wealthy you were, or how intelligent or successful or competent.

   It had rocked him to his marrow. He’d never wanted to experience another one as long as he lived.

   By the time the doctor had discharged him from hospital, it’d been too late to get to Callenbrook in time for the funeral. So he’d texted Nina that he’d had a work emergency so she wouldn’t worry when he didn’t turn up in Callenbrook, had grabbed the next flight back to London and had sought the professional help the doctor in Singapore had urged him to seek. He’d had therapy, had slowly worked through his issues, hence the reason he was here in the flesh now—and relatively coherent. But actually verbalising all of that…

   Closing his eyes, he swallowed and prayed to God his voice would work. ‘None of that means I didn’t care.’ He and Jo had spoken regularly on the phone, they’d video-conferenced every couple of months. She’d known how much he’d loved her.

   ‘Actions speak louder than words, Blake.’

   She crossed one remarkably shapely leg over the other and he found himself frowning. Nina didn’t have shapely legs. She just had…legs.

   ‘Luckily for them both, Mum and Granny Day continued to believe in you until the end.’

   His heart jackhammered in his chest. ‘But…you don’t?’ She was supposed to know him. Really know him. She was the only person left on this earth who did. She had to know there was a good reason why he hadn’t made it back for the funeral.

   Pursing her lips, she glared at her garden and shook her head. Just once. But it hit him like a sucker punch.

   ‘You needn’t think that means they weren’t hurt when you never came home either, or weren’t made sad by the fact that they never had a chance to say a proper goodbye.’

   She thought him heartless. She thought he’d turned his back on them. Before the guilt and regret, the grief, could blanket him in complete and utter inertia her words hit him. They hadn’t had the chance to say goodbye.

   ‘Gran’s passing wasn’t a surprise?’ On the quiet of the late afternoon air, his words sounded like gunshots. He’d been told his grandmother had died of heart failure.

   Nina’s eyes flashed, ‘Hell, Blake, she received a cancer diagnosis back in January.’

   January! But… ‘She never said a word!’

   Arms folded over a surprisingly generous chest. Not that he was looking. ‘I believe she asked you to come home for her eightieth birthday in April. That she made it clear to you how much that would mean to her.’

   She had. Which was when he’d finally confided in her about his panic attacks. He’d had several while in therapy—all connected with the thought of having to one day return to Callenbrook. As soon as she’d found out, Gran had backed off, hadn’t wanted to put more pressure on him. She’d ordered him to focus on his therapy and to get better. You should’ve told me, Gran.

   It was all he could do not to drop his head to his hands and weep. He should’ve worked harder, should’ve returned sooner. ‘I was taking her to Uluru next month.’

   ‘That was never going to happen. Though she did think she’d still be here. Except…’ Nina’s voice broke and her hand shook, making the ice in her glass tinkle. He knew her grief would be fresh and raw too, but at least she’d had a chance to say goodbye.

   ‘What the hell…?’ He rounded on her. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

   She tossed her not quite blonde hair over her shoulder, hard brown eyes glaring into his. ‘And what difference would that have made?’

   Derision stretched through her eyes—something he’d been used to seeing in the faces of the townsfolk of Callenbrook, but had never seen in hers before. It robbed him of the power of speech. She thought that badly of him?

   Of course she did. As far as she was concerned, he’d let down the two women who had given him a measure of stability when he was growing up, had given his hungry heart all the love it had craved. And why would she think differently? She didn’t know the truth.

   But she knows you…

   Not any more. And apparently he didn’t deserve the benefit of the doubt.

   So tell her, then.

   A familiar band of resistance tightened about him. He knew he shouldn’t feel embarrassed or ashamed. Or weak. But he did. As his therapist pointed out, he was a work in progress.

   ‘Besides, she asked me not to.’ One slim shoulder lifted, and with a jolt he realised she’d lost weight since he’d last seen her.

   It’s been ten years.

   Yeah, but Nina had always been slim, and now she was downright skinny. He swiped suddenly damp palms down his jeans. ‘Thank you for stocking the fridge and getting in the essentials.’

   ‘It’s the least Iris would’ve expected of me. I’ve no intention of letting her down. But understand this, Blake, I did it for her, not for you.’

   She rose and he blinked, because while Nina might’ve lost weight, she had curves. She must’ve had them ten years ago. She’d been nineteen when he’d left, but…

   He shook himself. What the hell was he doing? ‘Can I persuade you to join me for dinner?’

   ‘No.’

   The swift refusal had his head rocking back.

   Shapely legs made for her back door. ‘We need to talk, Nina.’

   She glanced back, that frosty eyebrow doing its thing. ‘About?’

   ‘The funeral?’

   ‘It’s all been taken care of.’

   ‘But—’

   ‘Iris knew exactly what she wanted, had plenty of time to plan it, and that’s what’s happening tomorrow. I’m not letting you mess with her final wishes.’

   He stood then too. ‘I want to say a few words at the funeral.’

   ‘There’ll be an opportunity for anyone who wants to speak to do so.’

   And then Nina was gone and for the first time in his sorry life, Blake felt utterly alone. Breathing in through his nose and out through his mouth, he started ticking off his list of threes—three things he could see, three things he could hear, three things he could smell.

   When the darkness had receded from the edge of his vision, he nodded. Right. Before he left this godforsaken town, the one thing he was going to accomplish was making things right with Nina again.

*

Nina glared at the blue-sprigged wallpaper on the kitchen walls. Clenching her hands, she dragged in a breath.

   You were too hard on him.

   Too hard? He’d deserved all that and more! She’d thought Blake was a friend—her best friend. She’d thought he’d be there for whenever she needed him. She’d thought—

   But she’d been wrong, and the pain of that still threatened to crush her. She couldn’t explain it, but during the worst of her mother’s illness, and at the beginning of Iris’s, the thought that she had Blake’s friendship to fall back on—the solidity of it—had given her comfort, had kept her strong. To know that when she needed him, she’d only had to call…

   Finding out that had been a lie had gutted her.

   Even so, she’d planned to act very differently when they finally came face to face. She’d planned on being polite—icily polite—to treat him like a stranger. But one look at him as he’d emerged from Iris’s back door had forced the air from her lungs in a hot rush, and she’d become a giant burning ache with a huge side serving of tossed anger. That icily polite facade had liquefied in a single eyeblink.

   The boy she’d known ten years ago would never have put work and money above people. The man he was now didn’t deserve her consideration, and he certainly didn’t deserve her generosity. He didn’t deserve her warmth or the relief of sharing his grief with her. He didn’t deserve an open-armed welcome or—

   He loved his grandmother.

   Pulling in a steadying breath, she nodded. He had. He’d cared about her mother too. And her. Just…not enough. Story of her damn life where men were concerned. They couldn’t be relied upon. First her father and now Blake.

She glared harder at the wallpaper. Her mother had loved it. Maybe it was the memory of her mother, but she found herself swinging around and stalking back out to the veranda. But she kept one foot planted firmly inside her own kitchen.

   ‘You and I will go to the service together tomorrow. It’ll look odd otherwise.’

He sat eerily still in that ludicrous electric-blue armchair, as if afraid any movement would send her scuttling away again. ‘Okay.’

   ‘I want to get to the church two minutes before ten. And we’ll go straight in without talking to anyone. And we’re sitting in the front pew. Got it?’

   ‘Got it.’ He shifted the smallest amount. ‘Driving or walking?’

   ‘Driving. Will your fancy car be ready by then?’

   He nodded.

   ‘Then we’ll take that. The tinted windows might be welcome.’

   He lifted his hands. ‘How on earth do you know my hire car has tinted windows?’

   The same way she knew its make and model, that it was a classic navy blue, and when it came to navigational and safety features it had all the bells and whistles. It also boasted a multitude of reversing and parking cameras. The way half the men of the town talked, that darn car could damn well near drive itself. She didn’t say any of that, just raised an eyebrow.

   ‘The Callenbrook grapevine.’

   He rubbed a hand over his face. She couldn’t help but notice the tired lines fanning out from his eyes and his pallor. He looked done in. She did her best to stop her chest from clenching or…anything.

   ‘Nina?’

   In the twilight, shadows had gathered beneath the veranda and she couldn’t make out the blue of his eyes. The intensity of his gaze, though, had a pulse inside her thrumming to life. Resentment, she told herself. ‘What?’ She might’ve snapped the word out a bit too curtly. His lips twitched a fraction, and that didn’t improve her temper either.

   ‘Thank you.’

   She hitched up her chin. ‘I’m not doing this for you. I’m—’

   ‘You’re doing it for Gran. I know. That’s what I’m thanking you for.’

   Shaking her head, she went back inside the house and closed the door behind her. Very firmly. Fact was, a part of her was doing it for him too—because of what the town had done to him as a fifteen-year-old. It’d been ugly and unfair, and she wasn’t going to let that happen again. Not a chance.

*

Nina and Blake sat side-by-side in the front pew of the church that Iris Day had diligently attended for most of her eighty years. The church was so packed that people stood in all the available space at the sides and back of the room and in the foyer—every pew crowded except for the front one, which had been left vacant in deference to her and Blake. Until Nina rose and grabbed Iris’s six closest friends and insisted they join them.

   And yet it was Blake she was aware of, sitting with that same eerie stillness he had the previous afternoon. And Blake she missed like a hole inside her.

   If the world and their relationship had been the way she’d thought it, she’d be sitting here holding tightly to his hand and taking comfort from his presence. Instead of mourning one person she felt as if she was mourning two—as if a double grief had taken up residence inside her heart. A heart still sore from the loss of her mother.

   Pushing all of that to one side, she stood and gave the eulogy. ‘Iris told me that she wanted today to be a celebration of her life and not a misery fest. I hope that I can do her justice.’ She spoke of Iris’s life and listed her many accomplishments, she shared special memories, making the assembled crowd laugh, dab their eyes, and nod.

   Folding up the sheets of paper on which she’d printed out the eulogy, Nina stared out at the assembled congregation. ‘Iris and I weren’t bound by blood, but we were bound by something even stronger—love. She was my Granny Day. I’m going to miss her every single day, but I have so many memories to hold close and find comfort in, and I’m so very grateful to have had her in my life.’

   She couldn’t look at anyone as she made her way back to her seat, afraid she’d burst into ugly sobs if she caught so much as a single sympathetic eye. Florence patted her hand and murmured, ‘Well done, Nina. Iris would’ve been proud of you.’

   Everything blurred. Beside her, Blake remained preternaturally still.

   ‘If anyone would now like to say a few words about Iris, share their memories, then I’d like to invite you to come forward now and—’

   Pastor Peg didn’t have a chance to finish what she was saying before the six women to Nina’s left all bounced to their feet and marched up to the front of the church. ‘As girls, we used to call ourselves the Seven Deadly Sins,’ Enid started. ‘Sorry, Pastor Peg, it was just our little joke. And it probably won’t come as a shock to anyone here that Iris was Lust.’

   Nina choked. What on earth…?

   ‘She had such a lust for life, you see?’

   Nina let out a breath and relaxed a fraction. Blake did too.

   ‘And a lust for goodness too, which is why it was such a shock to us that she had such a nasty, conniving little minx for a daughter.’

   Nina slapped a hand over her mouth to strangle a laugh. Oh, God!

Luckily, Enid swiftly moved on to an account of the many antics they all used to get up to and had the church in stitches. Blake, though, remained stony-faced throughout it all. The old Blake would’ve appreciated the dig at his mother.

   Old Blake is long gone.

   After the six remaining Deadly Sins had taken their seats again, eight more people made their way to the front, one after the other, to individually share a memory or reveal the impact Iris had on their lives. Iris had been a much-loved member of the Callenbrook community. And while a part of Nina reveled in all of it—because this was exactly what Iris had wanted—another part of her waited on tenterhooks for Blake to rise to his feet and say a few heartfelt words.

   What would he say? Could he redeem himself? Even if he failed, she wanted him to try.

   Despite his declaration of the previous evening, though, he made no move to stand and face the congregation. Instead the knuckles on his hands turned whiter and whiter as he clenched his hands harder and harder and his head and spine bent. She could hear the breaths sawing in and out of him.

   Without giving herself time to think, she reached across and laid a hand over his, squeezed it. He gripped it like a lifeline, and then, as if aware he might be holding on too tight and hurting her, his grip slowly loosened and his shoulders lost some of their tension and his head came back up.

   But he didn’t rise to his feet. He didn’t get up and pay public homage to his grandmother. When Pastor Peg motioned for them to sing the final hymn, Nina reclaimed her hand, disappointment wrestling with pity inside her.

   Refreshments were served in the adjoining hall. Nina was swamped with well-wishers along with the gossips eager to pry from her whatever titbits they could about Blake. Not that she was giving anything away. The Deadly Sins carried Blake off to a table and, safe in the knowledge that he’d be protected while he was with them, she did her best to banish him from her mind.

   This was supposed to be a celebration, and she did her best to be jolly and enjoy the anecdotes and recollections, but… In truth, she’d never felt less like celebrating.

   Slipping outside, she sidled around to the back of the hall and moved across to lean against the jacaranda that would soon be in full bloom, to sip her tea and catch her breath.

   ‘Holding up all right?’

   She turned to find Robbie McAllister scuffling the toe of his rarely used dress shoes in the dirt. Poor Robbie. He was twenty-one and as awkward as they came. He’d be mortified if she burst into tears.

   She could almost hear Iris’s voice in her head: His mother brought him up right, but the father…

   ‘Yeah, Robbie, just needed a breather. How about you?’

   He shrugged. ‘I really liked Mrs Day. She was a nice lady. I’ll miss working on her car.’

   ‘Fibber. I swear that little Honda of hers was being held together by duct tape and string.’

   He grinned. ‘It was all right.’ His smile faded. ‘How can you stand it? Being near him—the grandson? He didn’t come near her in years and—’

   ‘I’m guessing that’s coming from your father,’ she broke in with a raised eyebrow. She knew how much imagined injuries and resentments could snowball out of control in this town, and she wasn’t letting that happen now. Not a chance. ‘And, Robbie, we both know what a sterling judge of character he is.’

   Robbie had the grace to wince. ‘I suppose, but…’

   ‘Iris didn’t tell Blake she had cancer and was dying.’

   The younger man’s jaw dropped.

   ‘As far as Blake knew, he was taking her to Uluru on a holiday next month.’

   ‘No way,’ he breathed.

   ‘That’s the thing, Robbie. You can’t always tell from the outside what’s going on in other people’s lives—you can’t see what’s really happening or know what the real truth is. None of us should be so quick to judge. Iris taught me that.’ She fixed him with her sternest glare, but deep inside she started to squirm. Wasn’t that exactly what she’d done too? She’d been awfully quick to judge when Blake hadn’t shown up to her mother’s funeral. Maybe something had happened she didn’t know about?

   If that’s the case, why hasn’t he told you?

   Exactly! She folded her arms, hitched up her chin. ‘If you want to do Iris Day proud, you’ll remember that too.’

   He nodded, and then huffed out a laugh. ‘You know, you look kinda hot when you get all bossy like that, Nina.’

   ‘Robbie!’

   He sobered again. ‘Is what you just told me a secret?’

   He probably wouldn’t breathe a word of it to anyone if she asked him not to, but movement at the side of the church hall a few feet away caught her attention. Blake. Had he overheard her conversation with Robbie?

   Glaring at her, Blake folded his arms and gave a swift hard shake of his head. Very private and confidential was the silent message he sent in response to Robbie’s question. Yep, looked as if he’d heard the lot. Ignoring him, she glanced back at Robbie. ‘Not a secret, no. Just the truth.’

   Robbie ambled off and Blake stalked across to her. ‘Why the hell did you go and tell him that?’

   ‘Why the hell does it matter?’

   A hand slashed through the air. ‘Because my life is none of these people’s business, that’s why.’

   ‘But Iris’s life is, and was—in the same way she considered their business hers. And no matter how much you hate it, her and your lives intersect.’

   His head rocked back. ‘I don’t hate that. I love that our lives intersected.’

   Could’ve fooled her! ‘Where your and Iris’s lives intersected, though, is the bit everyone feels is their business.’

   ‘Well, they’re wrong, and—’

   ‘Stop being an idiot,’ she hissed.

   He blinked.

   She pointed a shaking finger at his chest, and then pulled her hand away, frowning, when she realised what a very nice chest it was. Grief. It was just grief. It did strange things to people.

   ‘Why am I an idiot?’

   He bit the words out and she tried to gather her scattered wits. ‘Because I’m not allowing this town to organise another damn vigilante group.’ As they had fifteen years ago.

   When Blake had been fifteen years old, he’d been beaten up by a group of older teenagers venting their anger, against Blake’s parents, on their own parents’ behalf—a form of reprisal. It had been brutal and appalling.

   And she wasn’t letting it happen again.

   She tipped the now cold contents of her cup onto the roots of the jacaranda. ‘I don’t want to receive a visit from the police with their lights flashing to inform me you’ve been taken to hospital. I’ve no desire to see you looking so swollen and bruised I can barely recognise you.’

   She gripped the handle of the teacup tight. ‘And I’ve zero interest in your damn pride, so suck it up, sunshine. If telling the truth prevents that from happening again, I’ll tell the truth to the next hundred people I see.’

   ‘You cried.’

   She shook herself. ‘What?’ When?

   ‘When you saw me at the hospital. When we were fifteen. Would you cry if it happened again now?’

   She clenched her hands so hard she shook. Was he trying to make light of this? Or was he deliberately trying to get a rise out of her? ‘Absolutely. But this time it’d be in gratitude that Iris wasn’t here to see it. Make no mistake, Blake, I’m not doing this to defend you. I’m—’

   ‘Doing it for Gran, I know.’

   Something in his eyes lightened, though, and it infuriated her even more. She pointed at him. ‘Damn straight. Don’t forget it.’ Before flouncing off.

​