Two Weeks 'til Christmas

by Laura Greaves

  About the Book

  Claire Thorne never expected to be heading home for Christmas in Bindallarah – the small country town she left behind thirteen years ago and spends every day trying to forget. But then again she never expected fate to bring Scotty, her oldest friend and first love back into her life. Or for Scotty to tell her that he’s about to get married – to a girl he barely knows.

  With only two weeks til Scotty’s big day on Christmas Eve, Claire’s determined to make up for lost time and help plan his wedding. And while she’s at it, she can make sure he’s not making a life-changing mistake. After all, it’s what any good friend would do.

  But is two weeks enough time for Claire to find the answers she needs? And will she be brave enough to question her own heart and the choices she’s made along the way?

  CONTENTS

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  To the ones we can’t forget

  PROLOGUE

  On the rare occasions Claire allowed herself a stroll down memory lane, Scotty Shannon was always her destination. She would find him in the recesses of her mind, waiting for her, still wearing the crooked smile that always surprised her because it made his serious face look so different. She would visit with him for a while, deep inside the thoughts she kept hidden away for safekeeping: those brittle moments whose replays she rationed for fear of wearing them out and losing them forever.

  Claire always took care to return to one of the happy days. Sometimes it was the first time Scotty told her he loved her, in the grotty kitchen of the dilapidated house he shared with three other veterinary science students. Sometimes it was earlier than that, the night of the beer-soaked O-Week party, the first time she’d seen him in the three years since she’d left Bindallarah. He’d walked into the bar, wearing a Santa hat even though it was almost Easter, and a tiny voice inside her head had exhaled and said, It’s you. At last.

  But most often she went back to Bindallarah and back to the start. Back to the Shannon family’s property, Cape Ashe Stud. Back to the stable roof late one Christmas Eve, when she was fifteen and Scotty was sixteen and their futures seemed as infinite and unknowable as the velvet blackness above them.

  They often climbed up there after one of the many dinners Claire shared with the Shannons that year, when the atmosphere in her own home grew so thick with tension that choking down a meal was impossible. They would lie on their backs, side by side but not quite touching, and listen to the mares nickering and stomping in their pens below. They’d stay there for hours, talking and laughing and watching the moon trace its languid arc across the sky, drunk on the heavy summer heat and the intoxicating nearness of each other.

  And then on Christmas Eve he kissed her. From the corner of her eye, Claire had seen her friend make the decision; watched him resolve that it was now or never. Scotty had a terrible poker face. His thoughts played out in his expression, scudding across his features like summer storm clouds. Then he was resolute and his frown relaxed. He had always been that way: most at ease when he knew his purpose.

  The sharp angles that made the other girls at school look past him softened. His hooded moss-green eyes widened. He raised himself up on his right elbow and looked down at her. He saw her. He saw through her protective layer to the very core of her.

  He lowered his face to hers and when their lips met she felt known. It wasn’t her first kiss, or his, but it was theirs, and its effect on her body was powerful. All of her senses intensified until she was thrumming with energy – and desire. Suddenly she could hear the waves crashing on Bindallarah Beach, five kilometres away. She could smell the spicy scent of the massive pine tree the Shannons festooned with fairy lights every Christmas. As they relaxed into the kiss, she felt the shape of him, felt herself curve to fit. She kept her eyes open, watched his fingers twist through her tawny curls, and knew with certainty that she would never, ever forget this moment.

  Claire rolled the memories of Scotty around in her head like boiled sweets on her tongue. He was a treat, her guilty pleasure. She savoured them, tried to make them last, tried to resist biting and shattering. She strove to be gentle with them, because she hadn’t been gentle with him.

  Other memories bubbled to the surface, but she pushed them back down. The look on Scotty’s face when she left Bindallarah for boarding school a month after their kiss. Or the day, five years later, when he offered her everything and she threw it all back at him.

  No, when she wanted to remember, Claire cherry-picked the moments that captured the best of Scotty – the best of her. She chose the snapshots that comforted her unquiet soul. It wasn’t that she still loved Scotty – she would hardly know what to say to him if she ever saw him again – but he soothed her somehow. On days like today, when her heart felt heavy, she wrapped the ghost of him around her like a security blanket.

  But even the memory of Scotty, even recalling the way every cell once burned for him, wasn’t doing anything for her mood tonight. The two glasses of wine weren’t helping either.

  Claire took another deep gulp of her shiraz as she toggled irritably between social media sites on her tablet. It was all babies, birthdays and bleating about the state of the world by people who were doing absolutely nothing to try to change it. Minutiae. None of it was important, not really. It was hardly life and death. None of her virtual friends or acquaintances was making hard decisions, taking big risks. Not one of them knew what it was like to bet it all – and lose.

  Claire sighed and scrolled through the recent posts in one of the equine vets groups she was a member of. She toyed with the idea of making a post herself. Maybe one of her esteemed colleagues could explain to her how she’d managed to lose a champion three-year-old thoroughbred to supporting limb laminitis when her surgical repair of his initial fracture just a week ago had been flawless and his recovery seemed to be textbook perfect. She sure as hell didn’t have any idea, and the not knowing was eating her up.

  She clicked on the search field and typed ‘laminitis’. A list of previous posts on the topic unfurled on her screen. Quickly, Claire scanned them, her blue eyes flicking over the names of the posters – mostly colleagues she knew well and some she didn’t know at all.

  And then a name she’d said more often than she’d uttered her own appeared.

  Claire froze. It couldn’t be him. She had searched for him before – more than once – but aside from a couple of years-old mentions in the university alumni magazine, Scotty didn’t seem to have any kind of online footprint.

  But how many Australian equine vets called Scotty Shannon could there possibly be? Perhaps she could imagine there were two Scott Shannons in their field. But Scotty? It had to be him. Her Scotty.

  She clicked on the name and the mystery doctor’s profile filled the screen. The profile picture was a stallion in full flight – handsome, but of no use to her whatsoever. There were no other photographs. She clicked on the ‘About’ tab.

  Hometown: Bindallarah, New South Wales.

  Claire’s mouth went dry.

  It was Scotty. Righ
t here, right in front of her. Eight years since they’d had any contact and he was in her living room, uninvited and undoing her the way he always had.

  Her stomach twisted uncomfortably. How long had he been using the site? Had he looked for her? Seen her profile?

  Her index finger hovered over the ‘Add friend’ icon.

  Why hasn’t he reached out?

  Claire swallowed another mouthful of wine. She knew why. She had asked him to stay away. Told him she couldn’t be in his life any more.

  She had begged him to forget about her and Scotty had obliged.

  But everything had been different then. They were so young. She was only twenty; Scotty was twenty-one. They hadn’t even finished university. Her life, as ever, was in chaos, while he was diligently carving out the path he had long intended to tread. He had been devastated when she turned their world on its head. But they had grown up since then. Maybe now he would understand. Maybe he would even be happy to hear from her after all this time.

  Claire’s index finger trembled. She tipped her wineglass to her lips once more. If Scotty was still angry with her, she thought she could bear it; she deserved it. But if he really had forgotten her? She couldn’t decide which was worse.

  She took a deep breath and tapped the button.

  CHAPTER ONE

  ‘Seriously, Claire, just pick one. While we’re young?’

  Jackie tapped her foot on the café’s worn linoleum floor. Actually, tapping was putting it mildly. In the clunky black lace-ups she insisted on wearing with her scrubs, Jackie’s impatient pat-pat-pat thudded like a kick drum.

  ‘Give a girl a minute, will you?’ Claire tossed a mock-peeved glare over her shoulder. ‘It’s a hard decision.’

  Under her breath Jackie muttered, ‘It really isn’t.’

  Claire pretended she hadn’t heard. Jackie had only joined her for the trip to the café to escape the astringent clinic smell for a few minutes. She brought the exact same lunch from home every single day: a tiny tin of tuna, six green olives, two Ryvitas with hummus and a single Babybel cheese. It was really no wonder Jackie always seemed so brusque and irritable – she must have been starving.

  Claire returned her full attention to the chiller cabinet in front of her and weighed up her options. An unusually busy day meant she hadn’t had a moment to eat; now it was nearly four o’clock and she was ravenous. Was she in a chicken-and-avocado-on-wholemeal mood? Perhaps a panini with salami and chargrilled vegetables would hit the spot. Or was it an old-school ham-and-salad-roll kind of day?

  ‘You might have been absent when they covered this at uni, but the ability to make quick decisions is generally something most people expect of an emergency veterinarian,’ Jackie said as her staccato on the lino approached machine-gunfire proportions.

  ‘But that’s just medicine, Jac. This is way more important. This is sandwiches.’

  ‘Ugh!’ Jackie threw her hands in the air. ‘I’ll be out the front. Try not to let me grow old and die there.’ She marched outside.

  Claire plucked the panini from the shelf and took it to the counter, placing a bottle of apple juice beside it. She’d known it was what she wanted the moment she’d laid eyes on it, but she wasn’t about to let Jackie Ryman force her decisions. Beneath her snippy exterior, Jackie was friendly and fun, but she could be demanding – it was part of what made her such a brilliant vet – and Claire didn’t do demanding.

  She paid for her lunch and pushed through the plastic strips that hung in the café doorway into the sultry December heat. It was like stepping into a furnace. The oppressively hot and humid Sydney summer was already in full swing and there were still two weeks until Christmas. She could drive from the clinic to Coogee Beach in under fifteen minutes, but there was no hint of a sea breeze here on the fringe of Centennial Park. The branches of the enormous Moreton Bay fig trees barely stirred. The air was like soup.

  ‘What are you doing for Christmas?’ Jackie asked as they plodded towards the clinic. The street was nearly deserted. Even the passing cars seemed listless.

  ‘Sitting inside with the curtains closed and the air conditioner on if this insane heat continues,’ Claire replied.

  ‘How festive.’ Jackie made a face. ‘Are you working?’

  She wasn’t. Claire always volunteered to work over Christmas, as well as at Easter and on public holidays. After all, she reasoned, she was single and didn’t have children – it was better that her colleagues with families were able to spend the holidays with them. The cases were invariably more interesting on days when most other vet clinics were closed too. On Labour Day back in October, one of the sweet old geldings from the riding stables at nearby Moore Park had presented with severe colic and Claire had saved his life with emergency abdominal surgery.

  And, besides, if she was working she had a legitimate reason to say no to Vanessa every time she begged Claire to go back to Bindallarah. She thought guiltily about the unreturned messages from her aunt on her voicemail, the unopened emails in her inbox. She would get to them. Soon.

  But this year, James, the practice manager, had ruined her plans by insisting she take three weeks off.

  ‘Actually, no,’ Claire said. ‘James won’t let me. Something about having accrued too much annual leave. Today’s my last day until the new year.’

  Jackie gave a low whistle. ‘Wow. I would have liked to be a fly on the wall for that conversation,’ she said with a chuckle.

  Claire shot her friend a sharp look. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Nothing, nothing,’ Jackie said, holding up her hands in a gesture of surrender. ‘It’s just . . . you’re not especially fond of being told what to do, Claire. You were that kid who was always backchatting the teachers, right?’

  Jackie was smiling, but Claire’s chest tightened as in her mind’s eye she suddenly saw herself as a skinny sixteen-year-old, cowering in the gloomy, oak-panelled principal’s office at St Columba’s. Her skin prickled at the memory of the thick wool dress and matching blazer, which had to be worn on even the hottest days. Sister Hilaria’s shrill admonitions still echoed in her ears.

  ‘Anyway,’ Jackie said slowly when Claire didn’t respond, ‘you’re not seriously telling me you’re going to spend your entire Christmas break sitting in your sad little unit?’

  ‘Excuse me, my apartment is not —’

  ‘Your bedroom window looks out over the bins.’ Jackie cut her off. ‘It smells like three-day-old Chinese takeaway in there.’

  ‘It does not smell —’

  ‘Why don’t you go back to Blendawilla and see your boyfriend?’

  They reached the clinic and Claire jerked the door open with more force than was strictly necessary, making the red-and-gold Christmas bells the receptionists had strung up jingle wildly. The blast of refrigerated air that enveloped her as she stepped inside did little to cool her rising temperature – but it was no longer the afternoon heat that was causing her cheeks to flush.

  ‘It’s Bindallarah,’ she hissed, causing several clients sitting in the waiting room to turn and stare. ‘And Scotty Shannon is not my boyfriend.’

  Claire stalked away and used her shoulder to shove through the double doors that led into the clinic’s hospital. She considered hiding in a stall to eat her lunch in peace, but sick horses could be irate at the best of times and weren’t likely to be thrilled to have to share their quarters with an agitated vet and a smelly sandwich. She went to her office instead.

  So did Jackie. ‘You do realise,’ she said, ‘that your reaction just now makes me more inclined to keep bugging you about your alleged non-boyfriend, not less?’ She perched on the edge of Claire’s desk. ‘So you might as well just tell me. What’s the deal?’

  Claire took a too-large bite of her panini and chewed slowly. She knew Jackie wouldn’t leave her alone until she told her something but, damn it, at least she could make her wait.

  ‘There’s no deal,’ Claire said at last.

  Jackie rolled
her eyes.

  ‘I mean it,’ she said firmly. ‘We’re just friends. Old friends who are back in touch after a few years apart and who chat every now and then.’

  ‘I think you mean “starcross’d lovers who were mad about each other for five years”.’ Jackie crossed her arms and smirked. ‘It’s been six months since you reconnected online. Why don’t you just ask him out IRL?’

  Claire frowned. ‘IRL?’

  ‘In real life,’ Jackie said slowly, as if explaining the alphabet to a toddler.

  ‘It wasn’t five years. We were together in high school, but only for a month or so. Then I didn’t see him again until I was eighteen when we were at university together and it was all over within a couple of years.’

  ‘But you were crazy in love with the guy. That doesn’t just disappear.’

  Claire paused. She couldn’t deny that some of what Jackie said was true. She and Scotty had exchanged a handful of chatty emails since he’d accepted her Facebook ‘friend request’ minutes after she’d sent it on that bleak night back in June. And they had loved each other once, deeply. But that was a long time ago. It might as well have been a different lifetime. Claire had grown up; she was no longer the frightened twenty-year-old who broke Scotty’s heart. He was almost her friend again.

  She wasn’t sure she deserved it, but when he allowed her back into his life she felt redeemed. She wasn’t about to ruin that by imagining there could ever be anything more between them than friendship. There was also the not insignificant fact that Scotty hadn’t so much as hinted at anything beyond a friendly interest in her. In six months, he’d never even suggested they meet.

  No, that horse had bolted – and Claire had no intention of chasing it. Once upon a time, years ago, there might have been a part of her that hoped they’d get it together again one day. That she would get herself together enough to stop messing things up. But life was a tricky thing, and having Scotty Shannon in hers as a friend was better than not having him at all.