For a split second, Scotty’s smile seemed to falter. ‘Well, of course,’ he said. ‘That’d be great. I know Nina’s keen to meet you, too. I’ve told her all about us.’ He abruptly turned his head and looked out to sea, as if regretting his choice of words.
‘So she knows she was your second choice?’ Claire said, and immediately regretted hers. ‘Sorry, that was meant to be a joke.’
Scotty let go of her hand. She hadn’t realised he was still holding it. ‘No worries,’ he said, not quite sounding like he meant it. He slapped his right hand on his thigh and Tank sprang to his feet. ‘So, see you around seven?’
Claire nodded. With his dog at his heels, Scotty walked away.
CHAPTER FIVE
Claire was still staring at Scotty’s footprints in the sand when Vanessa appeared minutes later and handed her a tall plastic cup.
‘The line at Bindy Brew was ridiculous, and it’s too hot for coffee anyway, so I went to the smoothie bar instead,’ she said. ‘That’s carrot, apple and ginger with organic almond milk.’
‘Bindallarah has a smoothie bar?’ Claire said. ‘This place is more hipster than Sydney.’
Vanessa chuckled. ‘Well, the bakery makes smoothies now. But you’d be surprised how the town has changed. The local council is very pro-development these days. We’ve got a new, young mayor – you remember Alex Jessop?’
Claire’s jaw dropped. ‘Alex Jessop? The meathead captain of the footy team? The guy whose favourite hobbies when we were at school were rabbit shooting and getting so drunk he’d pass out in his own vomit? He’s the mayor?’
‘That’s the one,’ Vanessa said. ‘Got himself a business degree and spent some time in New York after university. Came back bursting with ideas for revitalising the town. He’s quite the renaissance man these days.’
‘Wow,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘I had him pegged as the “marry the girl next door, have three kids by the age of twenty-five, work at his dad’s ag supply business for the rest of his life” type.’
‘People can change, sweetheart,’ Vanessa said gently. ‘You’ve been gone a long time.’
Claire ducked her head and took a long sip of her smoothie, feeling chastised. It was obvious that Bindallarah was different. She hadn’t really expected it to be the same dreary hamlet she’d left at fifteen, though it didn’t seem to have changed much when she returned briefly for her father’s funeral five years later. But she couldn’t simply forget her past here. Bindy had shattered her family, and that memory wouldn’t be so quick to fade.
‘So, you saw Scotty?’ Vanessa asked.
Claire looked up, startled. ‘How did you know that?’
‘Don’t look so shocked,’ her aunt said, laughing. ‘I saw him walking up the beach path as I was coming down. And besides’ – she nodded towards the deep indentations Scotty’s work boots and Tank’s paws had left in the sand – ‘I can’t think of any other owners of size-thirteen feet and a tripod dog that you’d be chatting to.’
‘I invited him for dinner tonight,’ Claire said. ‘Is that okay?’
‘Of course,’ her aunt replied. ‘But what will his wife-to-be think?’
‘Oh, I asked Nina, too.’
Vanessa raised her eyebrows. ‘Really? That’s very magnanimous of you.’
Claire felt a flutter of indignation in her chest. ‘What’s that supposed to mean? Why would I have a problem with Nina? I haven’t even met the woman.’
‘It’s not supposed to mean anything, darling,’ Vanessa said, her tone implying that it meant everything. ‘I just imagine it can’t be easy knowing Scotty’s about to marry someone else.’
The words hit Claire like a punch to the gut. ‘Someone else? You mean someone other than me? Aunty Vee, you don’t think I’ve been sitting around thinking that one day Scotty and I would get married, do you?’
Vanessa sipped her juice and shrugged.
‘That’s absurd,’ Claire said, not sure whether to laugh or cry. ‘We’re friends. That’s all. Until six months ago, Scotty and I hadn’t even spoken in eight years. Not since . . .’
‘Not since he proposed to you and you ran away to America,’ Vanessa said matter-of-factly.
Claire closed her eyes and breathed deeply. Her aunt was the only person she’d told about Scotty’s proposal, the only person who knew that Claire’s confusion and panic had been the catalyst for her decision to do her postgraduate equine specialisation studies at an American university.
She opened her eyes and regarded Vanessa steadily. ‘Right,’ she said eventually. ‘Not since then. He only asked me to marry him because Dad died and Scotty decided he could fix everything. You know what he’s like. We’re both different people now. I don’t have feelings for Scotty any more.’
‘And yet, news of his engagement has brought you racing back to Bindallarah,’ Vanessa said quietly. ‘Something eight years of invitations from your own family couldn’t do.’
Understanding dawned. This wasn’t about Scotty at all. It was about Claire having left Vanessa high and dry in a town where their family’s name was mud. Jim Thorne had burned a lot of bridges in Bindallarah by the time he died, and Claire had been so consumed by her own grief that she hadn’t thought much about how Vanessa had coped with the shocking loss of her brother – or how she had managed to clean up the mess Big Jim had left behind. The community might not have blamed Vanessa for Jim’s demise the way they had blamed Claire, but they had wanted someone held responsible for the damage he’d done and, with Claire on her way to the United States, her aunt had been the only Thorne still standing.
Claire’s heart thudded painfully in her chest as she contemplated for the first time how lonely her aunt must have been, raising Gus on her own without any sort of support network in town. Vanessa’s parents were long dead and Gus’s father hadn’t ever been in the picture. She had been close to Claire’s mother, Emily, but when Emily had finally walked out on Jim and moved across the country to Perth, Vanessa’s loyalty to her brother had driven her to cut contact.
The tears that had threatened earlier welled up again. ‘I’m so sorry, Vanessa. I never wanted to leave Bindy in the first place. It wasn’t my decision,’ Claire said. She grasped Vanessa’s shoulder with her free hand. ‘I wanted to come back when Mum left, but Dad wouldn’t let me. He said my education was more important. If I’d known what was going on, I would have been here in a heartbeat. I didn’t know about any of it until it was too late, not that anybody in this town believes that.’
‘I know that, sweetheart,’ Vanessa said, her eyes shining. She placed her own hand over Claire’s and squeezed. ‘Your father made his own decisions. Not great ones, admittedly, but it’s certainly not for you to shoulder the burden of his mistakes. I didn’t want you to come back here out of some sense of guilt. I wanted you to come back because I love you and I miss you. Gus and I both do.’
‘I love you too, Vee,’ she said, wrapping her aunt in a fierce hug. ‘And I’ve missed you more than I think I even realised.’
The mantle of guilt was like an anvil on Claire’s shoulders. Despite what her aunt said, Claire felt responsible. Responsible for her father’s lonely death, for the people whose money he’d lost, for failing to be there for Vanessa and Gus.
Her history with Bindallarah was littered with mistakes. And Vanessa was right: she had only returned now for Scotty’s wedding. But that was only half of the truth. She couldn’t tell her aunt that her plan was to stop the marriage before it started, that she was terrified Scotty was about to plunge headlong into a mistake of his own.
If she was ever going to set things right in Bindallarah, she had to start with him.
Nina Rioli was breathtaking. When Claire opened Vanessa’s front door on the dot of seven p.m. and saw Scotty standing there with a supermodel by his side, she felt herself deflate like a punctured football.
Nina was everything Claire was not: tall, with yoga-sculpted curves, dark eyes and a plump, bow-shaped mouth. Her glossy aub
urn hair cascaded to her waist in artful beachy waves and her skin was tanned cocoa brown and impossibly dewy. She wore a camisole top with loose linen pants and thongs, but she might as well have been in a couture evening gown. It was as though Nina had stepped straight out of Central Casting’s ‘yoga bunny’ department. She was a knockout.
Claire simply stared at her, unable to speak. In her battered denim miniskirt and faded David Bowie T-shirt, she felt pale, unkempt and graceless in comparison. She had heard people described as ‘stunningly beautiful’, but she couldn’t recall actually being struck dumb by another woman’s appearance before.
‘You must be Claire,’ Nina said eventually, ending the painful silence. Her voice was warm; her American accent carried a hint of a southern drawl. ‘I’m so happy to finally meet you. This one has told me so much about you.’ She playfully swatted Scotty’s chest.
Scotty smiled wanly. ‘This is Nina,’ he said in a small voice. He seemed stiff and formal.
‘Well, I think she knows that, honey,’ Nina said, laughing. ‘Thanks so much for inviting us. Can I do anything to help?’ She stepped into Vanessa’s hallway and handed Claire a chilled bottle of rosé. Claire glanced at Nina’s hand and noticed she wasn’t wearing an engagement ring.
‘Uh, no, just make yourself at home. Vanessa and Gus are out in the garden,’ Claire said when she finally regained the power of speech. ‘Dinner won’t be long. It’s just risotto. Nothing fancy.’
‘Ooh, yum,’ Nina said. She seemed genuinely delighted. ‘My favourite.’
Nina glided down the long central hallway of Vanessa’s cottage, while Claire silently berated herself for choosing to cook her signature Italian dish. With a name like Rioli, and looking like an extra from a pasta-sauce commercial, Nina was probably a gourmet Mediterranean chef.
She turned back to Scotty, still standing on the verandah. ‘Were you planning on coming in?’
He shook his head as if chasing away unpleasant thoughts and stepped inside. ‘Listen, Claire,’ he said, leaning in close, ‘there’s something I need to —’
‘Nina seems lovely,’ she said, cutting him off. Her words were clipped and she was surprised to feel something akin to anger bubbling up within her. It took only a glance at Nina to see why any man would fall for her. Her charms were plentiful. But Scotty wasn’t just any man. He was the best man she knew. Claire had never thought of him as someone easily entranced by physical beauty. It was so prosaic. Of all the crazy reasons to marry in haste, lust had to be the craziest. She had thought he was smarter than that.
‘Yeah, she’s fantastic,’ Scotty said, closing the door behind him. ‘But the thing is —’
‘Has she always been a yoga teacher?’ Claire turned and walked down the hall to the kitchen. Let him try to tell me she’s a part-time nuclear physicist, she thought. She slammed the bottle of wine onto the timber benchtop as she heard Scotty enter the room behind her. Through the open back door, she watched as Nina greeted Vanessa with a familiar peck on the cheek. Claire felt piqued: her aunt hadn’t mentioned she knew Nina so well.
‘Actually, she’s a vet,’ Scotty said.
Claire whirled to face him. ‘What?’ The idea that Nina was Scotty’s professional equal – and Claire’s, too – was as shocking as the news that she was his fiancée.
‘Yeah, in the States she was a specialist ophthalmologist, but the visa she came to Australia on means she can’t register as a vet here,’ he said.
‘But the yoga studio – how is she running a business?’
Scotty looked sheepish. ‘It’s not technically Nina’s business. Alex Jessop owns it. Remember him?’
Claire nodded. ‘Mr Mayor.’
Scotty laughed. ‘Yeah. Nina just works there as a casual teacher and he put her name on the place because, well, I guess he thought she was a good advertisement for doing yoga.’
‘You mean because of her insane bod?’ came a voice from the back door. Claire pivoted to see her cousin, Gus, bound into the kitchen from the garden.
‘Hey, Scotty,’ Gus said, running a hand through her bleached blonde crop. Then, registering Claire’s gobsmacked expression, added blithely, ‘What? Nina is smoking hot. It’s not news.’ She slid open a drawer and retrieved a corkscrew, then grabbed the rosé and darted back outside.
‘Gus has always had a way with words,’ Scotty said, offering an uncertain smile. ‘But, yes, I think Alex thought that having Nina as the spokesperson for his business couldn’t hurt.’
Claire felt like folding in on herself. She didn’t know what she’d expected, but it wasn’t this. She felt adrift and she didn’t know why.
‘I want you to be happy, Scotty,’ she said for no other reason than because it was the only true thing she knew in that moment.
Scotty flinched, as though her words had hurt. ‘I know,’ he said softly. ‘We will be.’
He held her gaze and Claire felt exposed. Something hung between them, some meaning she couldn’t quite grasp. It felt loaded and dangerous. Claire sensed that she was standing at a precipice. She had to decide whether to commit to her plan to try to stop the wedding or stand by and watch Scotty sign up for possible heartache. No, not possible. Probable.
It would be so much easier if Nina was just beautiful. Claire could just about get to grips with beauty. Falling hard and fast for a gorgeous woman was understandable, if annoyingly predictable. And if she was only beautiful, then convincing Scotty to call off the wedding would be the kindest thing for Nina, too – she deserved someone whose love for her was more than skin deep. If it was just about desire, the marriage would be disastrous for both of them.
Brains complicated things. If it wasn’t just physical attraction driving Scotty’s rush to say ‘I do’ – if he truly connected with Nina on a deeper level – then Claire had no business interfering. But Nina was a stranger to her. She couldn’t say whether or not that connection was there, at least not until she had spent some time with her.
‘Scotty, Claire,’ Nina called from the garden. ‘There’s two glasses of pink wine out here with your name on them.’
Claire needed to get to know the woman who had won Scotty’s heart. And with only twelve days until Nina was set to marry him, she had to start now.
CHAPTER SIX
Claire ladled another steaming spoonful of risotto onto Nina’s plate.
‘Oh, I really shouldn’t have seconds,’ Nina groaned, patting a nonexistent belly. ‘But you’re such an amazing cook, Claire. How am I ever going to fit into a wedding dress in two weeks’ time?’
‘I’m sure it wouldn’t be too late to have it altered,’ Claire replied, feeling oddly gratified that Nina had enjoyed the meal. ‘Not that you’ll need it.’
‘Actually, I don’t even have a dress yet.’
Gus’s fork clattered dramatically onto her plate. ‘Are you serious?’ she said. ‘Give me two minutes.’ She pushed back her chair and practically ran from the room.
‘It’s all happened so fast,’ Nina said, almost apologetically. She reached out and grasped Scotty’s hand. ‘I’ve been so busy with work – everyone in town wants a “yoga body” in time for Christmas – that I just haven’t had time to shop. And I don’t really know Bindallarah, so I wanted to wait until Scotty came back from his conference in Melbourne to get started on the wedding preparations. He’s been taking care of pretty much all of it, to be honest.’
‘I don’t mind,’ Scotty said, gently extracting his hand and picking up his fork. ‘There’s not much to do, really. We’re having the wedding up at Mum and Dad’s place, so it’s just a few hay bales and a trestle table.’ He flashed a cheeky smile and took a bite of his risotto.
An unexpected guffaw escaped Claire’s lips as a look of pure horror crossed Nina’s face. ‘He’s kidding, Nina,’ Claire said. ‘Trust me.’ It was typical of Scotty’s sense of humour to say something totally ridiculous, but with such a decisive air that nobody could tell if he was serious or not.
‘Although,’ Vanessa
chimed in, ‘Cape Ashe Stud is so beautiful, it really wouldn’t take much more than that to transform it for a wedding.’
Nina looked vaguely embarrassed to have missed Scotty’s joke. ‘I hear it’s lovely. I look forward to seeing it,’ she said.
Claire frowned. ‘You haven’t been to Cape Ashe? It’s only ten minutes away.’
‘Uh-uh.’ Nina shook her head and took a sip of her wine. She didn’t meet Claire’s gaze.
Claire looked at Scotty, but his expression was unreadable. A thick silence descended. All she could hear was the shrieking of the cicadas in the fig trees that surrounded Vanessa’s back patio and the distant thunder of the ocean. She didn’t know what to make of the uncomfortable exchange. Why wouldn’t Scotty have taken the woman he was about to marry to his family home – especially when it was the venue for the wedding?
It occurred to her that she didn’t actually know where Scotty lived any more. Claire still pictured him in his bedroom at Cape Ashe Stud, but of course he’d left there at eighteen to go to university in Sydney. At uni he’d lived in the crumbling share house that she’d always joked wasn’t fit for human habitation and ought to be condemned. And after that – who knew? When she had rejected his marriage proposal and fled overseas, she told herself she’d forfeited her right to know where Scotty slept each night. He might have lived with another girlfriend. So far she hadn’t been able to bring herself to ask if there had been others, but she knew there must have been. He wasn’t conventionally handsome, but in the fading evening light Claire was acutely aware that Scotty had something – that indefinable ‘it’. What had Jackie called it? Magnetism. That was it. Her heart rate quickened involuntarily as she watched his eyes glitter with the reflection of the bamboo torches Vanessa had lit to keep the mosquitoes at bay. She knew there was no way Scotty would have lacked female company between her departure and Nina’s arrival.
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