A Diamond in Her Stocking

by Kandy Shepherd

  ‘Jesse hasn’t mentioned any girls,’ said Sandy slowly.

  ‘Would he tell you?’

  Sandy shook her head. ‘I guess not. He seems to live by the code “a gentleman doesn’t kiss and tell”.’

  ‘That’s a good point in his favour. But there’s no need for you to worry about me and Jesse. We’ve agreed we’re going to try and be friends as we’re connected by family, but that’s all.’ No-strings fun. That was how he’d described it and it wouldn’t happen again.

  ‘Good,’ said Sandy with rather too much emphasis. ‘Please keep it that way.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Jesse is so not for you.’

  Lizzie felt stung by Sandy’s assumption. ‘I know that. I’ve figured it out all by myself. I don’t need my big sister to tell me,’ she said through gritted teeth. ‘I am not interested in Jesse as anything other than...than an acquaintance. Someone I have to try to be friends with because you’re married to his brother.’ She would keep telling herself that.

  ‘I’m glad to hear it,’ said Sandy with an air of relief that Lizzie found more than a tad insulting.

  ‘By the way,’ she said, ‘thanks for not telling me Jesse would be here when I arrived in Dolphin Bay.’

  Sandy looked shamefaced. ‘Yeah. That. I didn’t know he was going to injure his shoulder and land home here, did I? He’s staying in the converted boathouse where we lived before we built the big house.’

  ‘You could have warned me.’

  ‘I was worried you’d get yourself wound up at the thought of seeing him. I didn’t want you worrying about it. You’ve got enough on your plate.’

  They’d always looked after each other and her sister’s advice was well meant. ‘Oh, Sandy, you don’t have to worry about me. I’ve no intention of letting any guy get to me again.’

  ‘After all you went through with Philippe, you know I can’t help but worry about you. When I think of how you were in Sydney all by yourself having the baby while he—’

  Lizzie put up her hand to stop her sister’s flow of words. She didn’t want to even think about that time, let alone talk about it. ‘I’m older and wiser now. And much, much tougher.’

  ‘Maybe I was wrong not to warn you about Jesse being home in Dolphin Bay.’

  ‘No. You were right. It did give me a shock to see him here. Then to find out I’ll be working with him every day...’ Maybe if she’d known, she’d have found a way to put off the opening of the café until Jesse had gone.

  ‘Don’t knock back any offers of help—even if you don’t particularly want to spend time with Jesse,’ said Sandy. ‘It’s a big ask to get this café open for business in seven days. Besides, he’s only here for a few weeks.’

  ‘Four, to be precise,’ Lizzie said. ‘But don’t worry, Sandy. I’ve got very good at resisting temptation. Jesse Morgan is no danger to my heart, I can assure you. I promise I’ll make an effort to get along with him for your sake.’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  JESSE HADN’T LIVED in Dolphin Bay for any length of time for years. If he took the new job he’d been offered in Houston, Texas, he’d rarely be back to his home town. Yet he took pride in showing Lizzie more of the area where he, his father and his grandfather had grown up.

  He had seen so many parts of the world devastated by floods, tornadoes, earthquakes and other disasters he never took its beauty for granted. No matter the growth of the town itself, the heritage-listed harbour, the beaches and the national park bushland stayed reassuringly the same. Whatever the ups and downs of his life, he took comfort from that.

  ‘All I’ve seen of this part of the world is the town, the beach and the road in and out,’ Lizzie said when she settled into the SUV he’d borrowed from his father. She was wearing white jeans and a simple knit top that gave her a look of cool elegance, of discreet sexiness he found very appealing. ‘I’m looking forward to seeing more.’

  ‘Then we’ll drive the long way around to the places we’re going to visit,’ he said.

  Spring was his favourite time here, the quiet months before the place became overrun with summer tourists. The bush was lush with new growth, a haze of fresh green splashed with the yellow of spring-flowering wattle. The ocean dazzled in its hues of turquoise reflecting cloudless skies; the sand almost white under the sun.

  After they’d left the town centre behind, he drove along the road that ran parallel to the sea and stopped at the rocky rise that gave the best view right down the length of Silver Gull, the beach south of Big Ray. He was gratified when Lizzie caught her breath at her first sight of the rollers crashing on the stretch of pristine sand, the stands of young eucalypt that grew down to the edge of it. He owned a block of land on the headland that looked right out to the ocean. One day he’d build a house there.

  ‘I don’t know if you’ve been away long enough to be impressed that in the evening kangaroos sometimes come down to splash in the shallows,’ he said.

  Her smile was completely without reticence. ‘I would never not be impressed by that. If I saw kangaroos there now, I’d go crazy with my phone camera. My French friends would go crazy too when I sent them the photos.’

  ‘You might want to bring your daughter down one evening,’ he said, smiling at her enthusiasm, as he put the car into gear and pulled away.

  ‘Amy would love that, and so would I,’ she said. ‘Our Aussie beaches were one of the things I really missed when I was living in France.’

  ‘France must have had its advantages,’ he said, tongue-in-cheek.

  ‘Of course it did. Not just the food but also the fashion, the architecture—I loved it. Thought I would always live there.’ He didn’t miss the edge of sadness to her voice.

  ‘I’m sorry it didn’t work out,’ he said.

  ‘Thank you,’ she murmured and turned her head to look out of the window, but not before he saw the bleakness in her eyes.

  He’d like to know what had gone wrong with her marriage. What kind of a jerk would let go a woman like Lizzie and her cute little daughter? But it wasn’t his business. And he didn’t want to talk on an intimate level with her. Not when he was determined to deny any attraction he still felt for her.

  ‘If I remember right you used to surf when you were a teenager,’ she said after a pause that was starting to feel uncomfortable.

  ‘Correct,’ he said. ‘I was a crazy kid, always looking for bigger waves, greater challenges. My first year of university, a group of us went down to Tasmania to surf Australia’s wildest waves. It was a wonder none of us was killed.’

  ‘Would you do that now?’

  ‘Go surfing?’ he said, deliberately misunderstanding her question. ‘Not without a wetsuit. The water’s still too cold.’

  ‘I meant surf those extreme waves. I couldn’t imagine anything more terrifying.’

  Should he share his worst ever surfing story with her? The experience that had completely changed his life? He wanted to keep the time he spent with her on an impersonal level. But now that she’d dropped her chilly persona, he found her dangerously easy to talk to. ‘I lost my taste for extreme surfing when I had to outrun a tsunami.’

  She laughed in disbelief. ‘You were surfing a tsunami? C’mon, pull the other leg.’

  ‘Not surfing. Running. Literally running away from the beach as a monster wave thundered in.’

  ‘You’re serious!’

  ‘You bet I am.’ Even now his gut clenched with terror and he gripped hard on the steering wheel at the memory of it. ‘I took a gap year when I finished my engineering degree. Thought I’d surf my way around all the great breaks of the world. This particular beach was on the south coast of Sri Lanka. That morning I came out very early to surf. The boy who manned the amenities hut screamed at me to get off the beach and to run to the high ground with him.’
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  She gasped. ‘That must have been terrifying.’

  ‘His village was wiped out. But he saved my life. I stuck around to help in any way I could. The organisation I work for now came to rebuild and there was lots of work for a volunteer engineer. When we were done, they offered me a paying job.’

  ‘That’s quite a story,’ she said. ‘I wondered how you’d got into your line of work.’ He felt her eyes on him but he kept his straight ahead on the road. ‘The thing is, you don’t look like a do-gooder type.’

  Her comment so surprised him, he took his hands off the wheel for a second and had to quickly correct the swerve of the car. ‘And what does a do-gooder look like?’

  ‘Not like he could be an actor or a model. Not like...like you.’

  He laughed. ‘It doesn’t matter what you look like when people need help.’

  He knew he hadn’t been hit with the ugly stick so didn’t demur with false modesty when people commented on the fortunate combination of genes he’d been blessed with. Your looks you were born with. He’d learned it was the personality you developed that counted. Lizzie, for example, was turn-heads lovely but it was her energy and warmth that had drawn him to her. Camilla had been older than him, eye-catching rather than beautiful, but her smarts and confidence had drawn him to her.

  ‘Is that why you do it? To help people? When a guy like you could do anything he wanted?’

  ‘What else?’ He went to shrug but winced at the resulting pain in his shoulder. ‘That first project—the camaraderie, seeing people rehoused so quickly, it was a high. I wanted more.’

  The tsunami had cured him of his adrenalin-junkie taste for extreme sports. The surfing on five-metre waves, the heli-skiing on avalanches, the mountain biking off the sides of mountains. After seeing real disaster he no longer wanted to court it in the name of sport.

  But recently he’d been wondering if he had replaced one sort of thrill for another. The thrill of being called to dangerous sites of recent catastrophes, the still present danger, the high of being needed. It was a rewarding life. But he gave up a lot to do it. Regular hours, a permanent home. Of course that made for a convenient excuse to stay single. But Lizzie was the last person he wanted to discuss that with.

  ‘It must be dangerous and uncomfortable at times,’ she said. ‘I admire you. I don’t think I could do it. The world is lucky to have people like you.’

  He liked that she got it. Seemed that Lizzie took people for what they were.

  ‘When it all boils down to it, it’s a job the same as any other,’ he said. ‘Not, perhaps, one I’d want to do for the rest of my life. But one I’ve been glad to do while I can.’

  ‘I don’t believe that for a moment. It’s like a calling.’

  ‘Maybe,’ he said, not wanting to be drawn further into a conversation that might have him facing awkward truths about his motivations.

  He distracted Lizzie by pointing to a flock of multi-coloured rainbow lorikeets hanging upside down off the branches of an indigenous grevillea bush. They were intoxicated by a surfeit of spring nectar from its spiky orange blossoms. When he and Ben had been kids, they’d found the sight of drunken parrots hilarious. He was gratified when Lizzie found it funny too. And tried not to be entranced at the sight and sound of her laughter.

  * * *

  Lizzie carefully stacked her finds into the back of Jesse’s SUV, feeling more excited about the café than she had since she’d arrived in Dolphin Bay. Jesse had driven her through unsealed roads that twisted through acres of bushland to a property where the parents of one of Jesse’s old school friends had a beekeeping business.

  On the spot she’d bought honey harvested from bees that had feasted on blossoms of the eucalypts growing in the adjoining national park and named for the trees: Spotted Gum, Iron Bark, River Gum.

  Jesse seemed bemused she’d bought so many jars. ‘This is liquid gold,’ she explained as he slammed shut the door of the boot. ‘Each honey has a particular flavour and they’re not always available. I’m thrilled to bits. It’s also considerably cheaper buying it direct from the farmer.’

  ‘Your head is buzzing with ideas on what to cook with all this?’ he asked.

  She smiled at his joke and he met her smile with one of his own. When she’d first climbed into his car this morning she’d felt tense and on edge in his company but had gradually relaxed to the point she felt she could have a normal conversation without being choked by self-consciousness. ‘You could say that. I love to cook with honey but I also like to drizzle it over, say, baked ricotta for breakfast.’

  ‘Ricotta cheese for breakfast! A hungry man coming into the café won’t think much of that.’

  ‘How about served with a stack of buttermilk pancakes?’

  ‘With a side of bacon?’

  ‘With a side order of bacon,’ she said.

  ‘Much better,’ he said. ‘I like a big breakfast to start the day. I might become a regular customer while I’m in town.’

  There was something very appealing about a big man with a hearty appetite. She remembered—

  No! She would not even think about Jesse in relation to other appetites. Not for the first time she thanked heaven that her time with him at the wedding had been interrupted. She might have been very, very tempted to go much further than kisses and that would have been a big mistake of the irredeemable kind. Mere kisses were easy to put behind her. Though not without a degree of regret that they could never take up where they’d left off.

  ‘Why not?’ she said lightly. ‘I guarantee we’ll have the best breakfasts and lunches in town. If you’re still hungry after one of my breakfasts I’ll give you your money back.’

  ‘Is that a challenge?’

  ‘An all-you-can-eat challenge? You’ll just have to wait and see the food, won’t you?’

  ‘What about the coffee? A café will live or die on its coffee.’

  ‘The beans they’re ordering for me through the Harbourside are single origin beans from El Salvador and Guatemala. Fair trade, of course. I have no quibble with them.’ Her voice trailed away at the end. She’d decided not to complain too much about anything to Jesse in case it found its way back to Ben and Sandy.

  He turned to her. ‘You don’t sound as confident about the coffee as you do about the food.’

  ‘How did you know that?’

  ‘Just an edge to the tone of your voice.’

  It was scary how quickly he’d learned to read her. Was that the Jesse way with women? Or a genuine friendship building between them? Still, she decided to confide in him—this was just business. ‘You’re right. We’ve got a state-of-the-art Italian coffee machine. But I’m not sure how good the girl is we’ve employed to use it.’

  ‘If she’s no good, employ someone else,’ he said, again displaying the ruthless business streak that surprised her.

  ‘Easier said than done in a place like Dolphin Bay. There’s not a lot of need for highly skilled baristas; as a result there aren’t many to call upon.’

  ‘I’m sure you’ll sort it out,’ he said. ‘You’re likely to have a few teething problems to overcome.’

  ‘But I don’t want teething problems,’ she said stubbornly. ‘I want the café to run perfectly from the get-go.’

  ‘You really are a perfectionist, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ she admitted. ‘Which isn’t always a good thing. It means I’m often disappointed.’

  She knew there was a bitter edge to her words but she couldn’t help it. ‘No man is perfect,’ Philippe had shouted at her when she’d refused to take him back that final time. Was it so unreasonable to want a man who wouldn’t cheat and lie? Who could manage to stay faithful?

  Another reason to keep Jesse strictly hands-off. He was a player like Philippe. With all the potential for heartbreak that came with t
hat kind of guy.

  She forced herself away from old hurts and back to the café.

  ‘Tell me if you think this is a good idea—I want to ask your mother if she could share some of her favourite recipes from the old guest house. It would be nice to have that link to the Morgans in the café menu.’

  Morgan’s Guest House had been such a wonderful place, especially for a girl interested in cooking. Maura was an exceptional home-style cook.

  Jesse paused for a long moment before he replied. She wondered if it had been a bad idea. She let out her breath when he answered, not realising she had been holding it. ‘It’s a great idea,’ he said slowly. ‘I’m sure Mum would be flattered. I’d certainly like it.’

  ‘I’m so glad you think so,’ she said with a rush of relief. ‘I have such happy memories of helping Maura cook in the kitchen. She taught me to make perfect scrambled eggs. I’ve never found a better technique than hers.’

  ‘When my mother heard you’d become a chef she was tickled pink that she might have had an influence on you.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear that, because she was a big influence. My own mother encouraged me too.’

  ‘And your father?’

  She looked away from the car so she didn’t have to face him. ‘You’ve probably heard something from Sandy about what my father was like,’ she said stiffly.

  ‘Ben said Dr Randall Adam was an officious, domineering snob who—’

  Lizzie put up her hand to halt him. ‘Don’t say it. After all he’s done, he’s still my father.’

  ‘Sure,’ he said, and she felt embarrassed at the sympathy in his voice. She didn’t want him to feel sorry for her.

  She scuffed at the ground near the back tyres of the car with the toe of her sneaker. ‘Shall we say, he was less than encouraging when I didn’t want to follow the academic path he’d mapped out for me. I wasn’t the honours student Sandy was but he didn’t get that. He wanted me to go to university. When I landed an apprenticeship at one of the most highly regarded restaurants in Sydney he didn’t appreciate what a coup that was. He...well, he pretty much disowned me.’