by Cathryn Hein
Jas waited for him to speak but there was nothing. As the cradling continued, she stared at the ceiling, puzzled and a little alarmed. Rolling her over for sex she could understand. She’d been teasing him and he was more than ready, but this?
Gradually, his hold softened. His mouth moved against her neck. Slow kisses teased her throat before curving to her earlobe. The sound of his ragged breath in her ear shot tingles down her spine. Digby kissed his way across her face, each kiss landing in butterfly-soft touchdowns on her eyelids, her nose, her cheeks before drifting to her mouth.
They made love slowly and delicately, as if the moment could break either of them. No words, only shallow breaths and quiet moans, the magic of intimacy. The sadness of their fragility.
When it was over, Jas lay on her side in Digby’s spooned embrace, feeling him drift into slumber as she kept her eyes squeezed shut, praying that they’d both make it through the weekend without falling apart.
It was midmorning when they roused again. This time Jas found Digby awake and staring at her with a smile.
‘Hey, babe,’ he said.
‘Hey, good-looking.’
He brushed hair off her forehead. ‘Do something for me?’
‘What?’
‘Never stop being amazing.’
The surprise of his words had Jas falling against him as he’d done with her, and it was another half an hour before they crawled out of bed and into the shower.
Digby watched Jas pack her overnight bag for the stay at Rocking Horse Hill. He watched her in the kitchen, preparing them mugs of tea and Vegemite on toast. He watched her stack dishes in the dishwasher, watched her tidy away the toaster and wipe down the benches. If it weren’t for their morning in bed she would have thought he was trying to sear her into his memory, but their intimacy, his words, had given her some hope the relationship would continue. The longer it did, the more chance Jas had of usurping Felicity’s hold on him.
After all, a man didn’t call a woman amazing for nothing.
It was a glorious day outside. The light northerly that had been blowing the last few days was forecast to continue through the weekend, bringing with it mild conditions and bright skies. Digby relaxed against the bonnet of the car and drew Jas to nestle between his legs, his arms looped around her waist and hands locked loosely in the hollow of her back.
She fingered his collar. ‘I wish we could be together tonight.’
‘I know, but this is Em’s weekend. And Josh’s.’
Jas continued to fidget. She didn’t like to think of Digby alone in his apartment. Demons lurked there, memories. Her. ‘Will you be all right?’
‘I’ll manage.’
‘If you need me, call. I’ll come straight away. Em will understand.’
‘Jas?’
‘What?’
‘Stop it.’ He pressed his forehead against hers and lifted a single eyebrow. ‘Please?’
‘I can’t help it. I care about you, Dig.’ She breathed in. ‘A lot.’
Digby pulled back from her, his expression hunted. ‘Jas, we talked about this.’
She swallowed. She shouldn’t have said anything. ‘I know. It’s okay, really. Forget it.’ She forced a smile and draped her arms around his neck. ‘Now hurry up and kiss me goodbye before your sister and Teagan catch us.’
He did but it was different to earlier, although she couldn’t quite pinpoint how. Digby was a wonderful kisser, gentle but passionate, as if kissing her really meant something. This was the same, except somehow muted, as though he was holding back. Or, even more troubling, easing his heart out of it.
He smiled and tucked her wayward hair behind her ears for her. ‘Enjoy tonight.’
Jas hovered by the car as he settled himself and started the engine. There were so many things she wanted to say but every one of them would risk too much. He was here, still with her, which gave her a chance. And with her heart aching for him the way it did, a chance was better than nothing. One wrong word could destroy that.
He wound down the window and held his hand out to her. Jas took it, playing with his fingers as he stared at the dash. Breathing in, he finally looked at her and Jasmine’s heart began to race in fear at the bleakness she glimpsed behind his eyes.
Whatever he was building up to say never emerged.
‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’ Then he squeezed her fingers, and with a tug of his hand broke the connection between them.
Leaving Jas with the heart-sickening impression they might never connect again.
Jas, Em and Teagan were pink cheeked and happily tired by the time they arrived at Rocking Horse Hill. Teagan’s mount had been dropped back at its owner’s, Lod was brushed down and turned out into his paddock, Em’s attention-loving donkeys had been duly attended to by Jas, and the chooks and Chelsea the Indian runner duck were locked safely in their coop. The house was cosy and smelled deliciously of the white chocolate and raspberry blondies Em had made earlier for the next day’s morning tea, when Adrienne and Granny B would join them at the hill for make-up and hair styling.
When they were all washed up, Em took three champagne flutes from a cupboard and set them on the bench, then pulled a bottle of sparkling mineral water and another of champagne from the fridge.
As she went to crack open the water, Teagan stayed her hand. ‘Half a glass of champagne won’t hurt me.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Tonight’s important, Em. I want to toast you properly. It’s not like I’m an alcoholic, and I’ll be doing it at the reception anyway.’
‘I thought you’d sworn off drinking?’ said Jas. Although Jas didn’t know the exact details, the past year had been tough on Teagan, culminating in an extended stay in the upmarket health facility that her aunt Vanessa’s new husband owned. Since then, as far as Jas knew, Teagan had been teetotal.
‘Not completely. I have a drink every now and then.’ She smiled a little. ‘I can’t cope with any more anyway. No tolerance. One glass and I’m practically legless.’
Jas nodded at the bottle. ‘Definitely better make it a half measure then.’
Glasses in hand, they settled on stools around the kitchen bench.
Jas held up her flute. ‘To friendship and a beautiful bride.’
After they’d sipped, Em smiled at her bridesmaids and sighed happily. ‘How many times have we done this?’
‘Hundreds,’ said Jas. ‘Although when we were younger it was with your mum’s hot chocolates with those little marshmallows floating on top.’
‘Or her homemade lemonade,’ said Teagan. ‘And cinnamon scrolls. Remember those?’
They did. Cinnamon scrolls and more. It seemed like the kitchen at Rocking Horse Hill had been as much a part of Jasmine’s and Teagan’s youth as it had been for Em.
Never one to let guests go hungry, Em brought out a plate of nibbles for them to snack on while they reminisced. Dinner was to be simple cold roast marinated chicken and salad, requiring the briefest of preparation. But that was ages away, and the afternoon’s ride hadn’t come close to running the well of their conversation dry.
Just after six o’clock, Em was standing at the kitchen sink, rinsing their champagne flutes when she caught the sound of a car. ‘That had better not be Josh.’
Their visitor turned out to be not Josh but his sister, Sally, who arrived at the sliding door bearing an enormous grin and an equally enormous bouquet of dark red roses.
‘A delivery for the beautiful bride,’ she announced cheerfully, when Em opened the door. ‘From her adoring husband-to-be.’ She handed the bouquet over, to cheers and teases from Jas and Teagan.
Laughing, Em buried her nose in the blooms and inhaled. ‘They’re lovely.’ She leaned around the roses to kiss Sally and stood back. ‘Thank you. Coming in for a drink?’
‘I would but I need to get back to the horrors and I don’t want to interrupt your evening. Trust me, tomorrow will be huge. Everyone will want a piece of you, which is nice but exhausting, and won’t
leave you much talking time with your friends. Best make the most of it tonight. Oh,’ she said, pointing at the flowers and winking, ‘don’t forget to read the card. It might be important.’
As soon as Sally had gone, a flushed Em plucked the small envelope from the bouquet and retreated to the enormous floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Rocking Horse Hill, leaving Jas and Teagan to roll eyes at one another. Em hurriedly extracted the card and read. Her hand strayed to her chest, her mouth creasing into a smile. She lowered the card and blinked rapidly at the window, before raising the card and reading again.
‘Well?’ called out Jas. ‘What does it say?’
Em slipped the card back into the envelope and tucked it into the pocket of her jeans. ‘None of your business.’
Which is exactly how Jas knew she’d react. Em had always been private, especially when it came to matters of the heart.
‘Must be good,’ said Teagan, taking up the banter. ‘You look like the cat that’s got the cream.’
‘Probably because she is,’ said Jas, nodding knowingly. ‘Very attractive man, that Josh.’
‘He is,’ Teagan agreed.
‘Lots of muscles.’
‘Wears sexy stubble.’
‘Plays football.’
‘Can lift heavy things.’
‘Capable of turning uppity ice-queen Emily Wallace-Jones all squirmy and pink with just a note.’
Em jammed her hands onto her hips. ‘Have you two quite finished?’
Jas looked at Teagan. ‘Have you?’
‘Not really.’
‘No, me neither.’ At Em’s expression Jas broke into laughter. ‘What? Aren’t we allowed to sing your husband’s praises?’
Em lifted her chin. ‘I’m not telling you what’s on the card.’
Teagan sighed, locked gazes with Jas and shrugged. ‘Nothing else for it, we’ll have to steal it.’
And with that, the pair leaped off their seats and wrestled Em to the floor, giggling like schoolgirls.
‘This,’ said Em, struggling to sit up and laughing as hard as her bridesmaids, ‘is not how I imagined our dignified evening.’
It was all silly fun. Neither Jas nor Teagan had any intention of stealing the card, but when Em pulled one of her haughty Wallace moves they couldn’t help but take her down. It’s what they’d been doing for years.
‘You can be so like your grandmother sometimes.’ Jas grinned at her. ‘Which is not always a bad thing.’
‘Except when she mentions her lovers,’ said Teagan. ‘That’s not so fun.’
‘You don’t think,’ said Em, regarding them both worriedly, ‘she’ll try anything with the waiters tomorrow night, do you? The hen’s night was bad enough.’
Jas reached out to scratch Muffy, who’d wandered from her basket to see what all the fuss was about. ‘She’ll probably be too occupied chasing Harry.’
‘Who will be too busy mooning over Summer,’ said Teagan.
‘He’s such a sweetheart,’ said Em. ‘We have to help.’
‘And we will,’ said Jas. ‘We’ll have all tomorrow morning to convince this Summer person he’s worth a chance.’ She nudged and winked at Em. ‘No better place than a wedding to get romantic.’
‘Speaking of which,’ said Teagan, easing up on to one arm. ‘What’s the story with you and Digby?’
Jas glanced at Em and back to Teagan. ‘Is it that obvious?’
‘Harry noticed.’
‘Harry?’ said Jas. If Harry had picked up on them, everyone must know. Her shoulders sagged. This kind of pressure was the last thing either of them wanted. ‘Shit.’
‘Well? What gives?’
‘Nothing.’
Both Em and Teagan raised their eyebrows.
Jas eased to her feet. She needed wine. ‘Look, I don’t know what it is. Right now it’s nothing more than friends with benefits.’
‘Jas,’ said Em quietly, ‘Gran said he hasn’t spent a night home in weeks. That’s more than friends with benefits.’
But Jas knew how to shut the conversation down. ‘So what? I like sex, and Digby just happens to be very, very good at it.’
Em scrunched up her face. ‘You did that on purpose.’
It was Jasmine’s turn to lift her chin. ‘Yes I did. Serves yourself right for being nosy. And if you don’t stop, I’ll start telling you all about this thing he does in the shower.’
‘Dinner time,’ said Em, scuttling off to the kitchen, leaving Teagan and Jas to their laughter.
Teagan, however, was made of sterner stuff, trailing Jas to the bathroom when they went to wash their hands before dinner. ‘Is it really just sex?’
Jas tried to keep the despair from her voice. ‘It has to be.’
‘Oh.’ Teagan paused in her hand-wiping, her tone gentle with sympathy. ‘He still loves her.’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Yeah,’ said Jas. ‘So am I. But do me a favour? Don’t tell Em. I don’t want her worrying.’
But Em clearly was worrying. When Jas found herself awake in the early hours, unable to sleep, and wandered out to stare out at the moonlit slopes of Rocking Horse Hill, Em quietly appeared at her side minutes later.
‘Thinking about Digby?’ she asked.
‘Yes. And you.’ Jas indicated the hill. ‘I’m sorry you won’t have the photos you want of us all here, at the hill.’ Even for Josh, Digby wouldn’t be moved on his self-imposed ban from the place Felicity died, which meant the wedding party photos were to be taken elsewhere.
‘It doesn’t matter. There’ll be ones of Josh and me here.’ Em tilted her head and eyed the peak, smiling. Despite the tragedy that had occurred on its slopes, the craggy top of Rocking Horse Hill held special meaning for Em. It was where she and Josh had first fallen in love as teenagers, and found the courage to forgive and love one another again as adults. ‘It’ll be interesting trying to get up there in my wedding dress.’
‘I’m sure your new husband won’t mind piggy-backing you.’
Em smiled and then sobered. ‘Do you think he’ll cope tomorrow?’
Jas didn’t need to ask who she meant. ‘He says he will.’
‘Jas, I know it’s not my business, but you and Digby …’ Concern furrowed her brow. ‘You love him, don’t you?’
Hiding her own apprehension with a smile, Jas squeezed Em’s hand. ‘Stop fretting about us. Think of tomorrow and all the good things to come afterward. This is the start of your new life. With Josh, the man you’ve always loved and who’s always loved you. You don’t want to walk down the aisle yawning, do you? Or, heaven forbid,’ she leaned her shoulder against Em’s, ‘bags under your eyes.’
She laughed softly. ‘No.’
‘Good. At least we’ve settled that.’ She grabbed Em’s shoulders and twirled her to face the hall, giving her a friendly shove. ‘Now get to bed or I’ll dob on you to your grandmother. Then you’ll really have something to worry about.’
CHAPTER
22
Digby jerked awake. His ears were full of pounding blood, his chest painful with the thrash of his heartbeats. He swallowed, trying to clear the coarseness from his throat. Groaning, he rubbed his palms over his face and dragged them together until they sat prayer-like over his lips.
Felicity, huge-eyed and lovely, walking towards him in a wedding dress, the carpet blood-red beneath her feet. She’d been so close, within touching distance. He’d smiled at her with tears in his eyes, fit to burst with happiness that this longed-for day had at last come, and stretched out his hand for her take, only for an avalanche of rock to sweep her away from him.
Digby sat for a while, waiting for his pulse to return to normal. From the window came the faint glow of sunrise. The day was here. He wished it over already.
He was tired, so very tired, the sort of fatigue that penetrated deep into bone and made even the most basic of tasks a Herculean effort. He lay back down but knew there was no point trying for more sleep. His mind was too t
roubled, his heart too sore.
With a sigh, Digby threw off the doona and padded to the bathroom. The face that stared back at him in the mirror was red-eyed and haggard, like that of an old man. He quickly glanced away and splashed water on his face, hands scraping over the thick stubble of his jaw as he rinsed.
It hadn’t helped that yesterday he’d spent the afternoon walking the streets, brooding over Jas and his own screwed-up emotions, followed by an early dinner at a hotel restaurant with his father and not-much-older-than-himself stepmother Paige, along with Digby’s two blonde-haired, blue-eyed half-sisters.
Blinded by their resemblance to the children he thought he’d have with Felicity, Digby had struggled to look at them. At seven and nine, they were at that age of sweet cuteness that tugged hearts and made strangers stop and smile. Though it wracked him with guilt, for his own sanity Digby ignored them as much as possible, which left him having to concentrate on the lesser of two evils: his father.
Nothing had changed since his divorce from Adrienne; Henry was still an overconfident schemer. Digby listened politely to his father’s concerns about the current government’s economic policies and their effect on his export business, about the cost of the girls’ private schools, his lightly barbed jokes about Paige’s spending habits, and braced himself for the touch-up. It had happened before. With the exception of birthdays and Christmas, Digby and Henry rarely spoke, then every now and again, out of nowhere, Digby would get a phone call that would start off cheerful and over-friendly before descending into a moan about how hard done by his father was. Nothing was ever Henry Jones’s fault. Some other unscrupulous person or government was always to blame.
Before he passed away, Uncle James had warned Digby against this kind of pressure, and given him a strategy to fob his father off: the Wallace money was tied up in illiquid investments or under trust, with little available in cash. It was a lie. While a lot of money remained tied up in property and the agroforestry company that had made the family their real fortune, Digby could have sold shares, cashed in investment funds, dug into term investments. He never did though. Beyond paying directly for a few specific items relating to his half-sisters, his father’s pleas for money remained unfulfilled.
