Meet Me in Bendigo

by Eva Scott

  ‘How can you say that? You lied to me.’ She held up a hand as he made to interrupt. ‘Do not even go there,’ she said. ‘You lied by omission if nothing else. Even if we can get past that, there’s the fact that your family destroyed my family’s heritage without giving a shit they were doing it.’

  ‘That’s a bit unfair,’ he said. ‘I think the size of the payout cheque shows how much we did care.’

  ‘You can’t buy your way out of this situation, Ed. You think by throwing some money at the problem everything will be alright but it won’t.’

  ‘Like I said earlier, can’t you forgive me for the family I was born into?’

  ‘Even if I could, what are they going to say when they find out about you and me? They’re going to put you through a world of pain, and what if you buckle and decide I’m not worth the effort? Where does that leave me?’

  Yep, they were coming down to the wire now. Give him a minute to realise what she said was true and the whole thing would be over.

  ‘They already know,’ he said softly. ‘They’ve known for a couple of weeks now.’

  His admission took her by surprise.

  ‘You’re right. Rosie and Oliver were not happy. My mum, on the other hand, is delighted and looking forward to meeting you.’

  ‘Your mum?’ She couldn’t imagine Ed Carpenter with a mother.

  He must have read the look on her face. ‘She’s GardenerGuy94’s mother too, you know.’

  Annalisa frowned and gave a shake of her head, letting her thoughts reorder themselves. ‘Of course. I get that,’ she said, only she didn’t mean it.

  ‘You’ve got to remember, I am GardenerGuy94. Everything you talked about with him, you shared with me.’

  Those words proved to be the most confronting of all. Annalisa’s heart reeled with the memory of all the shared intimacies over the past months. Ed knew everything, he knew her inside out when she’d thought he didn’t know her at all.

  Her physical desire for Ed suddenly had an emotional component she hadn’t allowed for. In some ways she felt as if he’d stolen her diary and read it, accessed her private thoughts without her permission or knowledge. This man who set her blood on fire also held the keys to her heart. He could destroy her so completely she’d never recover.

  And after everything that had been said and done, he was asking her to trust him.

  She swallowed hard against the storm building in her chest, one full of complicated, unreconciled emotions she couldn’t identify. What was she supposed to think? Which way was she supposed to turn?

  She needed space. She needed to think somewhere far away from Ed Carpenter.

  Annalisa looked about for an emergency escape route. She had to get out of there.

  ‘I can’t, Ed.’ Panic began to make her voice shake. ‘I just can’t.’

  Acting on pure survival instinct, she turned and ran.

  ‘Annalisa!’

  Somewhere behind her, Ripley barked in echo of his master’s cry.

  She didn’t stop to look back. Running headlong along the path, heedless of the stares of the people she passed, Annalisa didn’t stop until her lungs burned.

  Reaching the billabong, she collapsed on its banks, sucking in great gulps of air as reality came crashing in on top of her.

  Once her breathing returned to normal, she took stock. The Garden of the Future had disappeared from view, taking Ed with it. She was teetering on an emotional tightrope and holding on for dear life.

  Annalisa closed her eyes, unwilling to look down into her heart, to the abyss that awaited her. One misstep and in she’d go, again.

  A cockatoo swooped overhead, joined by its mate in noisy flight. If only she could go with them and leave all her problems behind. If only she could open her arms and soar. But if she let go now she’d be in freefall.

  As her heartbeat slowed, her thoughts began to take the reins from her panic. Out here on her own, without Ed or GardenerGuy94, without Ben, without her family’s legacy, she was freefalling truly.

  What would happen if she let go of the past? If she let go of the burden of duty she’d given to herself to carry? Hopes, dreams and expectations: these things could weigh as heavily as loss, disappointment and sadness.

  Annalisa was tired of carrying so much, none of which seemed to serve her well. Who would she be if she put it all down and walked away?

  The leaves floated by on the water, oblivious to everything but the direction of the wind. Where was the wind blowing her? Away from Ben and away from Cappelli’s Hardware store and towards her own creative enterprise.

  She pictured Ed. Was he waiting for her or had he already left, giving up on them?

  The thought made her heart go into a panicky flutter. Annalisa had no idea how to knit together Ed and GardenerGuy94, how to make them one. Yet the idea of not having either of them in her life felt like hitting a brick wall at high speed, with bits of her shattered heart flying in all directions.

  She’d fallen for GardenerGuy94, something that had been fact for a while now. With Ed, she had a complicated lustful attraction that had veered dangerously close to love. Her feelings for the two men had torn her in half. If they were the same person, then her loyalties were not split. Her struggle would then be pointless. She could have both the emotional intimacy and the physical passion guilt-free.

  As she lay in the grass, images of the past few months fluttered about her head. Ed had not been upfront with her and, while she was mad at him for the way he’d handled things, she understood why he’d chosen the path he had.

  Annalisa would have indeed cut him off and never spoken to him again. Could she blame him for finding a way to keep her in his life when she had spent so many hours trying to find ways to keep him in hers?

  Emotionally spent, she followed her breath in and out, and the stirred-up silt of her mind settled back down.

  As she watched the reflection of the trees shimmer in the billabong, the idea of Ed being GardenerGuy94 began to grow on her. Oh, she’d be a long time forgiving him completely for the cock-up he’d made of things. There were still conversations to be had before that could happen. Yet she couldn’t escape the simple truth that he saw her for herself in a way that made her feel alive. If they moved forward together, they could step straight into the passion that had tempted them both since the day they met. All the barriers to them being together had been dissolved with Ed’s belated truth.

  She imagined being able to kiss him and not hold back, to touch his body in ways that had been forbidden to her up until now. Her body warmed at the images playing in her mind.

  In her imagination, GardenerGuy94 had looked completely different from Ed, in the same way she’d always thought of his personality being the opposite too. Looking back, Annalisa could connect the similarities, not only in character but in their life story. The truth had been right in front of her the whole time if she’d bothered to pay any attention. Things Ed had said to her that she’d only told GardenerGuy94 popped to mind. Ed was right; now that she knew the truth everything made sense.

  Ed had all the things she’d loved about GardenerGuy94 and more. He’d fought for her when she couldn’t fight for herself. He’d looked out for her, risking the wrath of his family. He’d put up with her temper and Nonna’s mistrust.

  And he’d done it all because he cared for her.

  Hope shot through her, fizzing in her veins and tingling across her skin. Her heart rose in response to the surge of love she felt for Ed.

  Everything would be okay. She didn’t have to choose, she could have both her heart’s desires. She could pour all her love into one man with no reason for caution anymore. She could give herself freely and joyfully.

  Annalisa shot to her feet, driven by the icy realisation that she’d left Ed thinking she wanted nothing to do with him. Again.

  ‘Holy shit,’ she muttered as she shook the grass out of her hair.

  As she started to walk back, urgency began to dog her every step, urging he
r to move faster. What if he hadn’t waited for her? He had to have waited. Ed was the man who’d come up with this crazy scheme to be with her in the first place. He wouldn’t give up now, would he?

  She began to run.

  The Garden of the Future came into view. She couldn’t see Ed. Breathless by the time she reached the picnic lawn, she barely had the energy to react to the fact the blanket and basket had gone. So had Ed.

  Proper panic gripped her now, squeezing her lungs of any remaining air.

  Annalisa looked about wildly. She had no cohesive thoughts driving her actions beyond the need to find Ed before it was too late.

  As she rounded the bed of bearded iris, she found him sitting on the park bench beneath the strange pink boxes embedded in the overarching hedge, Ripley by his side. He rose when he saw her and she came to a dead stop.

  Her breath came hard and fast as she walked towards him, her eyes locked with his, her destination in no doubt. Ed moved fast to meet her halfway, as if scared she might run again.

  They were so close now she could smell his intoxicating scent of sage and saltwater. He searched her face, as if he was trying to read her intentions there. His own face told his story plainly—all the hope, love and fear laid out for her to see.

  She wanted to touch him so badly. All she had to do was cross the divide separating them and nothing would be the same again. Ever.

  For once in her life, Annalisa stopped thinking and simply acted on instinct, throwing herself across the space between them, into his arms.

  Ed staggered under the force of her as her lips met his and she kissed him without holding back a thing. He returned her kiss as passionately, his hands tangled in her hair as Ripley danced around the two of them, barking.

  Ed broke the kiss at last, laughing. ‘Enough, Ripley, enough.’

  He held her tight, resting his forehead against hers, the two of them cocooned in their bubble, oblivious to the other visitors.

  ‘I’m sorry, Annalisa,’ he whispered. ‘I never meant to hurt you. It was the only way I could think of to get you to fall in love with me twice.’

  She had so much to say, words crowding her head, jostling for a place on her tongue. None of them could convey what she felt for this complicated, frustrating man.

  Snuggling closer still, she smiled before slipping her arms around his neck. ‘I’ve never been in a threesome before,’ she whispered in his ear.

  Ed threw back his head and laughed. She could feel his body relax beneath her hands as he realised the meaning of what she’d said.

  ‘I don’t want to disappoint you, but I don’t want to be anyone other than Ed. Your Ed,’ he said, before he lowered his lips to hers, unleashing lightning in her blood and melting away the last of her resistance.

  ‘I think I can live with that,’ she said when she came up for air. ‘I don’t think I can handle more than one of you anyway.’

  ‘You know I’d walk through fire for you, don’t you? That has always been the case, from the very beginning, and it’s never going to change.’

  She kissed him again, gently this time, conveying all her love and gratitude through touch.

  He smiled and tightened his arms around her waist. ‘I want to leave the past behind where it belongs: that’s all the complications, the pain and the loss. Neither of us have had an easy run of things. What do you say?’

  Annalisa nodded; there was nothing more she wanted in this world. ‘I’m ready to close the door and start fresh. After I’ve spent some time emotionally torturing you of course.’ She felt, rather than heard, his chuckle.

  ‘It’s nothing less than I deserve.’

  So many painful memories crowded the last few years: Ben’s death, the pandemic, and coming to terms with the hard fact that her family business couldn’t survive in the twenty-first century the way it had in the past. Thinking about it now made her wonder how so many crazy, life-changing things could happen in such a short time.

  ‘But what if the future has as many problems as the past?’ A nugget of worry appeared in the bottom of her stomach, threatening to spoil the moment. ‘Anything can happen.’

  Ed tucked a wayward curl behind her ear with such tenderness the gesture made her heart ache. ‘Can’t be any harder than what you or I have already gone through. Alone. We have each other now. Whatever comes, we’ll figure it out together.’

  Together.

  Extract from The Goldfields Gazette, 2 November 2021:

  FRESH START AS HISTORIC LOCAL BUSINESS REINVENTS ITSELF

  Local businesswoman Annalisa Cappelli has successfully reinvented her family’s historic hardware store after being forced out of business by Carpenter’s Warehouse.

  Cappelli’s Hardware has been a landmark in Wongilly since the goldrush days of the nineteenth century. The store managed to change with the times until the pandemic hit in 2020. Changes to retail habits and the arrival of a Carpenter’s Warehouse to the area resulted in dwindling sales.

  ‘Closing the doors of Cappelli’s Hardware was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. I want to say thank you to the community of Wongilly for all their support. After a hundred and sixty years, it’s time for a new chapter.’

  Annalisa Cappelli has converted the historic hardware shop into a doll-house factory which she runs with her partner Edward Carpenter. Wildflower Doll Houses has caught the imagination of online shoppers, with their doll-house kits being shipped to all corners of the world.

  Annalisa finds herself run off her feet. ‘We’re so busy that I’m going to have to employ someone to help me, especially with Christmas on the way.’

  Edward, of the Carpenter’s Warehouse family, met Annalisa during the build for the Goldfields warehouse. Despite being on opposing sides businesswise, the two fell in love.

  ‘I’m a landscaper by trade and moving to Wongilly has allowed me to pursue my dreams of opening a container tree farm. I’m never happier than when I have my hands in the soil.’

  The two businesses are off to a thriving start with a promising future ahead of them. The couple have plans to eventually marry and raise a family in Wongilly where Annalisa was raised. ‘We believe in this community and are committed to helping it grow no matter what the future may hold for us all.’

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  I respectfully acknowledge the Traditional Country upon which this book was written. I acknowledge and pay my respects to the Gubbi Gubbi and Turrbal Traditional Custodians.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  A book is never written in complete isolation, even though I wrote this particular one during the Great Pandemic Lockdown of 2020. With that in mind, I’d like to thank my son, Xavier, for being wonderfully patient while we worked through joint issues of homeschooling and novel production. I’d like to thank my wonderful husband, Guy, for emotional support and wine during this time. Neither could I have done without.

  Thank you to my old mate, Michael Flynn, who cheerfully agreed to have the dead guy named after him. The least I could do. To Rebekka Napper, for manuscript reading, plot point suggestions and child-minding services. Could not have done it without you. Thank you to Annette and the coffee crew at The Old Corner Shop, your encouragement and steady supply of caffeine got me over many a writer’s block. To the amazing friend that is Alli Sinclair, your friendship and encouragement from the other end of the country has sustained me through challenging times. As always, a big hug to Natalie Benlolo for early morning conversations about love, life and the Universe.

  Thank you to my father, Rob Walker, and my cousin, Leona Latcham, for their memories and photos of our shared family history in the Victorian goldfields. I’d like to say that during my research I stumbled across a lost branch of the family but the truth is, they stumbled across me. Thank you to Jan Macloy for the missing pieces of the puzzle. Now we know where we all get our silver tongues from.

  Thank you to Federation University Australia Historical Collection (Geoffrey Blaine Research Centre), the State Library Vic
toria, Sovereign Hill Museums Association and the Ballarat Reform League Inc. for access to historical documents pertaining to the history of the Victorian goldfields. Thank you to the research and anecdotes of Nick Richardson (La Trobe University) and Phillip Adams.

  I rely on Johanna Baker to add her magic to my manuscript and she never fails to bring the good stuff. Thank you, and here’s to many more books. To the editorial team: Julia Knapman, Chrysoula Aiello and the eagle-eyed Annabel Adair. I cannot emphasise enough how I rely on these ladies to catch me before I fall. And they do, every time. Thank you. To the Harlequin art department for another amazing cover, thank you. To Sarana Behan, publicist extraordinaire, for long chats about books, American politics, cocker spaniels and lessons on marketing — you are a delight, thank you.

  Finally, to the reader. While I’m writing I think of you often, wondering if you’ll like the story as much as the last one. Here’s hoping. Thank you for coming with me on the journey so far. I appreciate your warmth and support deeply.

  ISBN: 9781867230601

  TITLE: MEET ME IN BENDIGO

  First Australian Publication 2021

  Copyright © 2021 by Eva Scott

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.