‘Why?’ The edge in Stephen’s voice matched Scott’s.
Scott’s voice was saturated in sarcasm. ‘Maybe it’s just because she’s been shot and she needs to sleep?’
‘Just out of curiosity, mate, why’d she ask you to take care of Ken? Why not Stephen, Dad or me?’ Clayton asked, pre-empting Stephen, probably because he knew Stephen was about to ask in a way that would piss Scott off.
‘Probably because I don’t ask so many bloody questions,’ Scott snapped before downing the rest of his beer and stalking back into the house, muttering something about calling Amy Blaine and updating her on what’d happened.
Stephen stared out over the paddocks surrounding his family’s home, feeling like a powder keg ready to blow.
‘Clayton. Mate! Heard some woman got pegged in the leg on your place. How many times do I have to tell you flowers and chocolates work better?’ Jo cringed as a voice from the long-distant past boomed through the Hardys’ open front door and into the living room, where she lay on the couch with her head in Stephen’s lap. Stephen started running his hand gently through her hair, but she could feel him tensing at her old nemesis, Jeff Rousse’s words, as if he were about to say something. Angie Hardy beat him.
‘Watch your mouth!’ she yelled from the kitchen, giving Jo a good idea which branch of the family tree the Hardy men had inherited their booming voices from.
‘Sorry, Ange!’ Jeff called back. ‘Bad joke. I was just talking to Clayton. Didn’t know you were there.’
‘We’re all here, you idiot, so talk a bit bloody quieter,’ Rob grouched from the couch next to Jo and Stephen’s. He and Stephen were watching the news. Scott was in Mike’s old room on the phone, presumably apologising for missing the day’s photo shoot, and Clayton had gone outside the minute he’d heard a vehicle pull up out the front of the house. Jo thanked God that Rachael, Stephen’s twin sister, was still in Sydney. There was such a thing as too many Hardys.
‘Aw. Sorry, Rob,’ Jeff called out, his voice more apologetic than Jo had ever heard it in her teens. Then Jo remembered he’d been Clayton Hardy’s best friend since they were kids, so that’d make sense.
‘Then shut up,’ Stephen bellowed before his father could get a word in.
‘Yeah. Well, I would, but I came over to let you know that we’ve had a bit of trouble lately with kids shooting kangaroos on our place. Dad found a dead’roo on the edge of our north boundary fence yesterday. Looks like they shot it with a.22.’
‘That right?’ Rob exchanged a look with Stephen above Jo’s head. ‘You tell the police yet?’
‘Not yet,’ Jeff replied. ‘Was going there tomorrow. The old man just told me. Anyway, who got shot? They said she wasn’t hurt badly, but it must have been a bit of a scare.’ He paused. ‘It wasn’t Rachael, was it? I thought she was over east still. Did she come back early?’ His voice sounded frantic all of a sudden.
‘Relax. No, it wasn’t Rachael,’ Clayton said calmly. ‘Look, mate, Jo’s trying to sleep, she’s had a rough day and you’re probably making her head pound, so quiet down.’
‘Jo? Who’s Jo?’
‘Jo Blaine,’ Clayton said. ‘She’s the one who was shot.’
‘Holy shit! Rabies Blaine?’ Jo internally cringed at the nickname Jeff had given her after she’d punched him out when she was twelve and he was sixteen. He’d stolen Amy’s only Barbie doll and thrown it out of their school bus window and Jo had retaliated. He’d never forgiven her for publicly humiliating him and had made her life hell from that day. He’d become even worse after the day Stephen had stood up for Jo that same year but Jo hadn’t cared. Stephen had been the first person ever to stand up for her. It probably hadn’t meant much to him to tell Jeff where to go but it had meant everything to her.
‘Yeah. Jo Blaine.’ Clayton spoke over the top of Jeff, who’d asked the question a second time.
‘Oh.’ Jeff sounded stunned. ‘Shit. She all right? What’s she doing back in town?’
‘Yeah, she’s all right. She’s with Stephen now.’ Clayton answered only half of Jeff’s questions, no doubt because he was aware of Jo being within earshot.
‘With Stephen? Jesus, she gets around, doesn’t she? Wasn’t she with Sco—’
‘So, what’s up, mate? You end up buying Colin Reid’s bull?’ Clayton interrupted in an obvious attempt to circumvent the train wreck that would happen if either Stephen or Scott reacted to his idiot friend’s big mouth.
‘Colin’s bull? Nah. I went over there this morning, and . . .’
Jo tuned out when she heard Jeff’s voice drifting off as he and Clayton walked out of hearing range. She wouldn’t have to see him and walk any further down memory lane after all, thank God. Relaxing in relief and feeling Stephen doing the same, she fought the urge to drift back to sleep.
‘Want me to go out there and kill him?’ Stephen asked softly, his voice rumbling through his chest as he smiled down at her.
‘Hmm? No. Not worth it,’ Jo mumbled.
‘Yeah, you’re probably right there. Want to go to bed?’
‘Yeah.’ Jo looked up at him, feeling a touch of the warm fuzzies at the concerned expression on his face.
‘Want me to carry you?’
‘Nooo.’ Jo quickly protested and half sat up, fighting dizziness. ‘It’s a wonder you don’t have a hernia already after you carried me earlier. I’ll walk.’
‘You’re worth it. And it gave me a chance to man up.’ Stephen gave her a bone-melting smile and a wink. ‘Besides, if you’re feeling guilty, I’m sure we could talk about it later.’ He waggled his eyebrows when he said talk, and Jo started laughing, gently prodding him in the stomach.
‘Look, matey, when I’m well enough to talk next, you’re not going to get a word in edgeways.’
Chapter 11
Ibn the chopper pilot was going to have to get over his ridiculous Shania Twain crush, Jo thought with a long-suffering expression. The volume he insisted on having his music playing on the helicopter’s sound system would be considered assault in most sane countries, but no one had the nerve to complain, including Jo. Ibn was big, ornery and Trinidadian, and when pissed off had been known to ‘accidentally’ leave people stranded onshore in Nouakchott, Mauritania’s dusty, isolated and above all impoverished capital city. That meant no work, no pay and almost guaranteed food poisoning at the company’s onshore staff housing. Busted eardrums or not, no one wanted that.
Jo had left Perth only two days before, and she was already missing Stephen. The next two months were bound to be hellish. She looked out the window to the horizon where a gray-brown sky blended seamlessly with the colour of the sea to create a hermetically sealed world containing Hedgehog, and no doubt, his latest disaster. She’d claimed two weeks’ sick leave while her leg healed, and her dreadful sidekick had gotten to work before her. It didn’t take a psychic to know what was going to greet her in the next few hours. Better to think about her next conversation with Stephen, which, come hell or high water, would be as soon as she could hijack the phone box.
The past weeks together had been heaven. Bullet wound and all. Not that the bullet wound had slowed them down once Jo had decided to put the whole incident and the emotional upheaval it brought with it out of her mind until she could do something about it. She’d had a lifetime of practice switching off stuff like this, and the experience had served her well. Instead, she’d determinedly savoured every additional hour she’d spent with Stephen, who’d insisted on treating her like a fragile flower until she’d had enough, declared herself recovered within a week of coming back from George Creek, and jumped him. After that the two of them had barely come up for air.
The only downside had been the times he’d tried to ask her questions about her relationship with her family. She’d managed to sidetrack him every time, but he’d been stubborn and had then diverted the conversation to questions about her current job. She hadn’t wanted to really talk about that either, preferring to share funny rig stories from earlie
r in her career when she’d enjoyed things more.
She knew he’d been getting frustrated with constantly being headed off at every pass. She was getting frustrated, furious and so sick of this too-old helpless feeling, especially when she now had Stephen to lose along with everything else.
No, better not think of that. Better to concentrate on the fun they’d had together after they’d both worked out it’d be best to keep things light during her recovery.
Now, unfortunately, it would be another two months before she got her next fix of him, and even thinking about having to wait that long set her teeth on edge. A lot could happen in two months, as she’d learned the few times she’d left Perth thinking she was in a relationship and returned to find out she wasn’t. No, better not think of that now. Better to suck it up, listen to Shania and try to anticipate what disaster awaited her at the boxy steel rig poking up out of the North Atlantic on the horizon.
‘Nice view, bro. So this is where you’ve been holed up while you let Lauren keep all your money? You never had furniture this nice when you lived with her.’ Stephen’s twin, Rachael, had always possessed the tact of a rampaging elephant. She was standing by Jo’s living room window, taking in the late-afternoon view of the Swan River, which was a grey blur through a steady downpour of rain.
‘Hi, Rach. How was your flight? Welcome to Hotel Stephen. Picking you up from the airport was all a part of the service,’ Stephen said dryly, dumping his sister’s ten-ton case on the doormat before closing the front door and reaching down to heave Boomba into his arms to give him a pat behind the ears.
‘What is that?’ Rachael asked, staring at the cat and deliberately ignoring Stephen’s sarcasm.
‘A cat, Rachael. I’m pretty sure you learned about them when we were kids. You know, they were the things that sat on the mat in a hat.’
‘Shaddup.’ Rachael levelled a glare at him, her dark-brown eyes, identical to Rob’s and Clayton’s, shooting daggers. ‘I can see it’s a cat, but why is it so huge?’
Stephen looked down at Boomba, who was gazing up at him with drooling feline adoration. ‘Did you hear that? I’d be feeling pretty pissed right now if I were you.’ The cat didn’t seem to think getting annoyed was called for and started purring.
‘He’s a Maine Coon cat. Biggest breed there is, I think.’
‘I hope he’s not planning on sharing the couch with me tonight.’
‘Nope. He and I have an exclusive relationship. So what are you gonna cook me for dinner?’ Rachael was a classically trained French chef, and just the thought of her cooking was making Stephen’s mouth water.
‘Nothing. I’m too tired,’ Rachael said distractedly, looking around at the apartment’s walls covered in inbuilt bookcases and a series of black-and-white landscapes on the wall above one of the couches. ‘Hey, these photos are Scott’s work, right?’
‘Yep.’
‘So . . . how are you and Jo getting on, with you house-sitting?’
‘Ah, about that. We’re kind of—’
Rachael’s eyes went wide. ‘You’ve hooked up, haven’t you? I can’t believe this! You hooked up and no one told me?!’
‘Well, aren’t you behind the eight ball,’ Stephen teased. ‘I thought someone would have by now.’
‘If you don’t put me in front of it in the next five minutes, things are going to get messy,’ Rachael threatened. ‘You and Jo Blaine? How? When?’
‘Big questions, sis. I’ll need food to answer them.’ Stephen grinned. ‘C’mon, we’ll go down to Little Creatures and I’ll fill you in.’
The sound of the hundreds of people talking over each other in between drinking beer and eating tapas at long bench tables roared around them as Stephen told Rachael about the shooting. The smell of roasting garlic and pepperoni wafted over to them from the wood-fired pizza oven in the open kitchen and mixed with the smell of hops coming from the microbrewery attached to the restaurant.
‘Did they catch who did it yet?’ Rachael asked eventually.
Stephen swallowed down a rush of anger nearly as acute as it had been the day the shooting had occurred. ‘No, but since Jeff told the cops about the trouble he’s been having with people shooting kangaroos on their place, the cops have filed it as an accident. Someone shooting’roos or rabbits, and Jo got in the way. The stupid thing is that Dad and Clayton would have been happy if someone had volunteered to keep the rabbits down. Everyone’s been so busy lately, they’re getting out of control.’
‘I say we start putting them on the menu at Evangeline’s.’ Rachael’s eyes lit up the way they always did when she talked about food. ‘I can do a lot of magic with rabbit.’
‘Not these ones. They’re totally feral,’ Stephen said darkly. ‘Actually, can we not talk about rabbit? It’s putting me off my food.’
‘Fine with me. Tell me about you and Jo.’
‘I thought I just did,’ Stephen said in exasperation before snagging the last slice of the pizza they were sharing. Rachael was notorious for her appetite, which was almost as big as Stephen’s, even though she was half his size.
‘Cut the crap.’ She reached over and speared an olive off his slice before he could raise it to his mouth. ‘You guys serious? And if so, what happened to that other woman . . . Bridgett? You must have dumped her the day you started up with Jo, given the time frame.’
Stephen frowned. ‘Funny you should mention that. Yeah, she has to know we’re over, but she won’t let me have a proper conversation about it with her. She’s avoiding me like the plague, as a matter of fact. I’ve tried calling her a whole heap of times, even went over to her place once when I knew she was home, but she didn’t come to the door. It’s getting a bit old. I know she knows we’re over, she has to. And it’s not even like we really had a thing. But I was hoping to be a gentleman about this and do it the right way by splitting up in person.’
‘So, what you’re telling me is that you’ve been chasing after a woman to officially end a temporary fling and instead of meeting you halfway, she’s avoiding you and effectively treating you like crap. Am I right?’
Stephen shifted uncomfortably in his seat, feeling a flush travelling up his cheeks. ‘Yeah. When you put it like that . . .’
‘Yeah, I’m going to put it like that!’ Rachael huffed out a long-suffering sigh. ‘Please tell me you’re not being a colossal idiot again, Stephen?’
‘Again? What the hell do you mean again?’ Stephen demanded.
‘One word for you.’ Rachael pointed her finger at him. ‘Lauren.’
‘What?’ Stephen exclaimed. ‘Where did this come from?’
‘You figure it out,’ Rachael said mulishly.
Stephen resisted the urge to reach across the table and strangle her. ‘You want me to draw a target on my chest or something?’
‘Nope. I want you to start kicking arse! You’re too bloody nice! It’s as if what happened years back with Jo broke you in the head and ever since then you’ve let women walk all over you. Just set Auntie Corinne on to Lauren, do what every other arsehole guy out there does nowadays and text this woman Bridgett telling her the game is up, and move on.’ Rachael took a long drink from her pint of pale ale while giving her brother the greasy eyeball. ‘Does Scott know you’re with Jo? If he doesn’t, you’d better watch out or he’ll be all over you with a sharp, pointy stick. Remember how he was years ago?’
‘He’s the one who asked me to help her out, remember?’ Stephen said, slicing a hand through the air before his sister could start on him again. He could only take so much before he snapped and he was feeling himself getting close to losing his temper. ‘Butt out, Rach.’
He maintained eye contact until she shrugged and began to peruse the menu for something else to order. They spent a couple of minutes in silence before Stephen reached over the table and ruffled her hair.
‘Look, thanks for caring, okay. I’ll sort it all out this week.’
‘Damn straight you will.’ Rachael held up her hand to order a
nother round of beers.
‘Right after I bury you in the backyard for being a pain in the arse.’
‘Stephen.’ Bridgett air-kissed Stephen’s cheek as she whisked into Jo’s apartment. She skirted Boomba with a wary expression and dropped her handbag on top of Rachael’s rumpled pillow and blanket on the couch. It was first thing in the morning, but as always, Bridgett looked immaculate, wearing a sharp navy-blue suit, her blonde hair perfectly blow-dried, and her make-up toned down to suit the time of day. ‘I’ve been trying to get a hold of you for weeks, but since you’re obviously avoiding me, I decided to stalk you.’
Stephen closed the front door after her, trying to process what he’d just heard. Her sheer ballsiness was pretty damn breathtaking. ‘Hey, Bridgett. I remember things a little differently, given how many calls you haven’t returned, but it’s good to finally see you. Want coffee?’
‘Is it good to see me? Well, that’s nice to hear. Strong. Black. No sugar,’ she said brusquely, looking around for somewhere to sit and then giving up.
There wasn’t a clear surface in sight. In the fifteen hours since her arrival, Rachael had managed to explode her suitcase all over the place. Stephen mentally rolled his eyes when he spotted a pair of his sister’s undies on the dining-room table. If anything, Rach was worse than Mike.
‘Your housemate’s?’ Bridgett asked archly, taking in the red lacy nothings and no doubt drawing her own conclusions.
‘No. They’re my sister’s. She’s in the shower, otherwise I’d introduce you.’ Stephen sighed. ‘Come on through to the kitchen. It’s marginally better.’ He’d been getting dressed for an early-morning meeting, so his light-blue shirt was partially unbuttoned and untucked, and his feet were bare.
Bridgett followed, watching him begin getting together the makings for coffee. ‘So, do you intend to tell me what’s going on?’ She propped a hip against the kitchen bench and crossed her arms. ‘One minute we’re seeing each other every day, business and pleasure, and the next I don’t hear from you for weeks. You know, I actually think I’m hurt.’ Her tone of voice was so cool, Stephen felt the room temperature dropping a few degrees.
Unforgettable You: Destiny Romance Page 16
