Real Men Don't Break Hearts

by Coleen Kwan

  “It was cowardly of him. He should have manned up.”

  The bar of soap was in her grip. Before she knew what she was doing, she hurled it straight at him. Mouth gaping, he dodged it by just a few millimeters. “What the—”

  “Man up? Man up?” She flung another soap bar at him. It zipped past his ear and crashed into a row of candles. “Is that all you care about? What about the fact that you turned him against me, that you talked me down to him at every opportunity, that you sabotaged my relationship with him?”

  “You’re crazy. I never did—” He ducked as another lavender missile whizzed past his head. “Will you stop throwing bloody soap at me!”

  “You’re such a damn liar!” She thought she’d gotten over the whole episode, but perhaps because she’d never had the chance to scream and yell, she’d bottled it all up, and Nate’s arrogant reappearance was her opportunity to finally vent everything. In a strange way it felt good to get it all out. “Let’s face it—you never liked me, and you hated the thought of Seth and me being together. You were jealous of what we had, so you deliberately destroyed it, you sad, miserable, cocky waste of space!”

  She snatched up another soap, but before she could throw it, Nate grabbed her wrists and pinned her hands down on the counter.

  “You’re right. I didn’t like you.” His fuming face was just inches from hers. Her heart skipped a beat as she saw the faint stubble on his gritted jaw, the veins tracing his temples, the icy chips in his irises. His hot breath burned her cheeks. “You were a prissy Goody Two-shoes who looked down your nose at me like I was scum. You thought I was a bad influence on Seth, and you didn’t care what he wanted. All you cared about was having a fancy wedding and a husband to take care of you. Jeez, why d’you think Seth spent so much time with me? It was the only way he got to enjoy himself.”

  Ally could hear the blood swooshing against her eardrums, could feel Nate’s hard grip on her skin, but she couldn’t seem to move or to speak. All she could do was stare at him and drink in all the terrible things he was saying.

  “Yes, I didn’t like you one bit, and I made no bones about it,” he continued relentlessly, “but I didn’t sabotage your relationship. You did that all on your own. And you’re dead right: I’m not sorry Seth dumped you. You were all wrong for him, and I’m glad he realized that just in time. Marrying you would have been the worst mistake of his life.” He paused, his voice losing some of its razor sharpness as he added, “And your life would’ve been ruined as well. You both had a lucky escape.”

  At last she found the strength to yank herself free. A chill settled over her, cooling the hammering in her ears, snap-freezing her stomach into a cramp. “Get out of my shop.”

  His expression faltered as though his conscience had finally been pricked. “Ally, I—”

  “I said, get out. You don’t own this place yet, and until you do, stay away from here.”

  “Look, I know we—”

  “Get out!” The chill was evaporating, and everything inside her was starting to seethe again. She seized another bar of soap.

  He raised his hands. “Okay, I’m going. We’ll talk later when you’ve calmed down.”

  Growling, she raised her arm. He backed away slowly. Only when he’d left the shop did she let the soap fall.

  …

  So much for a fresh start. If he had any sense he’d drive straight back to Sydney and never visit this damn town again. But since when did he act sensibly? He’d never been one to back down from a fight, and he wasn’t going to let one pissed-off jilted bride from six bloody years ago drive him out of town.

  Nate slipped into his Maserati parked outside the Red Possum and gunned the engine. If he were younger he’d have roared away as fast as he could, but now he forced himself to stay under the speed limit as he motored down the road in the direction of Robbie’s house. His house.

  What was Ally’s problem, anyway? Was she really still hung up on something that had happened years ago? Sure, it was pretty humiliating to be left at the altar with all the wedding guests waiting, and Seth had been a weasely coward for going into hiding. To this day Nate was still disgusted with his cousin’s behavior. But still, did Ally really wish she’d married Seth? Couldn’t she see what a terrible match they were? And then to lay the blame squarely on him, well, that was just bullshit. Still, he shouldn’t have laid into her so hard. She’d surprised him the way she’d stood up to him. Ally was all grown up now and, he had to admit, surprisingly attractive even when she was riled.

  Why did he have to buy the one building containing Ally’s shop—not to mention her apartment, too? He groaned at his rashness. Of course, he didn’t have to go through with it. Property purchases had a cooling-off period, and he could take advantage of that to extricate himself from a tricky situation. But he knew he wouldn’t. He’d promised Mr. Cummings, and Nate never went back on his word. Old-fashioned, maybe, but there it was. Also, by buying Mr. Cummings’s less-than-prime piece of real estate so the old man could go fishing in the sun, he was doing the right thing by the bloke. Making amends for the past. Even though the man had no inkling of Nate’s reasons. Reasons he didn’t want to think about too closely right now. And regardless of that, why the hell should he back down anyway, just because of Ally?

  All too soon he reached his house. It was situated on what had once been the outskirts of town, but recent subdivisions meant the old timber-clad home on half an acre was now surrounded by modern villas on small allotments. As he got out of the car, he glimpsed the curtains twitching at the front window of the place next door. Mrs. Bennett, his old neighbor, being a busybody. Just like old times.

  Opening the front door, Nate was greeted by a cold, musty smell tinged with a hint of mildew. A cleaner went through the place once a month, but an old house like this needed living in to disperse the ghostly damp.

  Ghostly damp? Where’d that come from? He wasn’t exactly the sensitive type. Yet, walking through the house, he couldn’t get rid of a sense of an otherworldly presence hovering over his shoulder. Ignoring it, he flicked on lights, opened windows, turned on heaters. Ghostly damp or not, he was determined to spend the night here.

  He fetched his bag from the car, found some sheets, and made up his old bed. Every movement echoed through the house; he’d forgotten how quiet it was around here.

  When his mobile phone rang, the caller ID told him it was Seth. The muscles in his abdomen tensed slightly as he answered. “Hey, Seth.”

  “Hi.” Seth sounded disconcerted. “Er, are you okay to talk right now?”

  “Sure.”

  “Wasn’t expecting you to pick up. Thought on a Friday night you’d be on a date.”

  Oh, yeah? Nate’s mental antennae bristled. He knew his cousin pretty well. Seth had chosen this hour to call on purpose, hoping to get his voice mail, and wasn’t keen to speak to him directly. Why?

  “No, no date tonight.” Just a flipped-out woman hurling soap at him.

  “So…where are you?”

  Nate frowned, his suspicions growing. Seth didn’t normally indulge in phone chit-chat. “I’m down in Burronga.”

  A half-strangled choke bounced against Nate’s eardrum. “Burronga! What the hell are you doing there?”

  “Just checking up on my place.” He paused, deliberating whether to confide in his cousin. Why not? It wasn’t as if he had anything to hide. “As a matter of fact, I’m planning on moving back here.”

  “What!” Nate held the phone away from his ear until the coughing died down. “I don’t believe it. Why would you want to do that?”

  Good question. He’d wrestled to come up with a logical answer but had failed. He had very strong, very personal reasons, but he wasn’t prepared to bare his soul to all and sundry. Seth was his cousin, Nate had helped him get his start in Sydney, but they weren’t exactly confidantes.

  “I need a change,” he said briefly.

  “So you’re resigning from Praxus?”

  “I’ll be doi
ng some part-time consulting for them sometime down the line, but yeah, I’ll be gone in two weeks.”

  Seth let out a low whistle. “Jesus H. Christ. I don’t believe it. Didn’t they give you a six-figure bonus last June?”

  “Money isn’t everything.” Nate rolled his shoulder, irritated. Hell, if Robbie could hear him now. Money had been almost everything to his brother. If only he hadn’t been so bad at making it and keeping it.

  “So you’re going to move to Burronga and what, grow tulips?” Seth let out a half-derisive, half-disbelieving snort.

  “Actually, something like that. I’m going to restart Robbie’s landscaping business.”

  His cousin choked again. “You’re crazy, man.”

  Probably. Robbie would have guffawed the loudest, but maybe he’d have been secretly pleased, too.

  “You don’t know anything about landscaping,” Seth continued.

  “Not true. I helped Robbie when I moved in with him.” Weekends, after school, holidays, he’d toiled and sweated alongside his older brother. Robbie had even paid him a small wage, though Nate would have done it for nothing. That was how grateful he’d been for Robbie taking him in after their prick of a stepfather had driven him out with his constant beltings. “And I’ve completed a landscaping course in my spare time.”

  “Burronga, man…” He could picture Seth shaking his head. “That place is the worst. You’ll go stir crazy there in two weeks, I guarantee it.”

  Nate had epitomized the wealthy, fast-living bachelor for so long that he had his doubts, too. Did he have it in him to swap his Italian suits for khakis, his air-conditioned office for the scorching sun and drenching rain, his computers and conference calls for digging dirt and hauling compost?

  He hoped so.

  “Well, thanks for your ringing vote of confidence,” he said crisply, tiring of the conversation. “Why did you call me?”

  “Ah. Well, I have some news for you, too.” Seth’s voice reverted to its original hesitant tone. “My transfer came through. I’m leaving for London at the end of next month.”

  “Hey, that’s great. I know you’ve been hoping for that for a while now.”

  “Thanks, yeah, I’m over the moon…but there’s something else.”

  Finally, Nate thought. It wasn’t Seth’s transfer that was making him so cagey.

  Seth cleared his throat. “The thing is, I want Paige to come with me, but she won’t unless we make things official, so the upshot is we’re getting married. In four weeks’ time. In Burronga.”

  It felt as though a fish had swum into Nate’s ear. His cousin’s words swirled through his brain, making no sense.

  “I know you don’t believe in marriage and all—”

  And then he realized what he’d just heard and shook his head vigorously. “I don’t care about you marrying Paige. I care about you getting married here in bloody Burronga.”

  “Paige grew up in Burronga, and she’s the only daughter.” Seth sounded defensive. “She wants to have a big white wedding with all the trimmings.”

  “Ally still lives here.” He waited for Seth to say something, but his cousin’s silence turned a little sullen. “You do still remember who Ally is, don’t you? She’s the girl you didn’t have the guts to face, the girl you left standing at the altar—”

  “Okay, you don’t have to go on and on. And by the way, technically I didn’t leave her at the altar; she was in the back office or something. It wasn’t like she was waiting for me at the altar in front of everyone.”

  If they’d been talking in person, Nate would have hit his cousin. He’d heard several justifications as to why Seth had left his bride-to-be without a word, but never one so lame. “You can spin it all you want, but the fact is you don’t treat someone like that.”

  Seth heaved a heavy sigh. “Yeah, yeah, but you didn’t like Ally anyway. You were glad we didn’t get married.”

  “You did the wrong thing, and you know it.” He bit out each word. “And how do you think Ally will feel when she hears you’re marrying Paige right here in Burronga?”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if she knows already,” Seth gloomily replied. “Paige told her mother a couple of days ago, and apparently Crystal’s been working the phones nonstop. The whole town probably knows by now.”

  Nate’s stomach made a bilious nosedive. The memory of his encounter with Ally in her gift shop seared through his brain cells. Had she already heard about Seth’s wedding? He recalled her blazing blue eyes, her voice cracking, the soap flying past his head… Yes, she’d known, all right. And what had he called her? A prissy Goody Two-shoes? He winced. She certainly wasn’t that girl anymore, not by the way she’d sparked and flared as she’d hurled the soap at him. With her hair tumbling around her flushed cheeks she’d looked anything but prissy. In fact, she’d looked kind of appealing. And now she had even more reason to hate his guts. What kind of bad karma had connived to make him walk into her shop as the new landlord just when she’d learned the fiancé who’d jilted her was marrying someone else, and in the same town?

  “You’re not going to use the same church, are you?” he asked.

  “God knows. You know women and weddings. As soon as we decided on the date, Paige was off and running. She’s got a whole file of what she wants—the dress, flowers, cake…jeez, everything. Apparently all her friends have wedding files, too. Did you know women do this?”

  “Not the women I date,” Nate retorted.

  Seth sighed. “Well, it’s out of my hands now. All I have to do is turn up on the day.”

  Silence built between them, prickly, uncomfortable. “You know how I feel about marriage, so I won’t bore you again,” Nate said. He was reluctant to ask the next question, but he brought it up anyway. “Are you sure you want to marry Paige?”

  “Yeah, mate, I do.”

  Not exactly a ringing endorsement, but neither of them could be accused of being sensitive new-age guys. He didn’t ask Seth if he was in love with Paige. Didn’t want to know, didn’t trust the answer. He’d never been in love, so what could he add? Paige was an attractive young woman, but he’d never really clicked with her. For him she was too spoiled, too sure of herself. She was like a million other women he knew, and privately he wasn’t sure what Seth saw in her. But it wasn’t his problem—he wasn’t marrying her.

  There was only one more question he needed to ask his cousin.

  “So,” he said. “Have you told Paige about Ally?”

  Chapter Three

  Ally shut her car door and hurried toward her sister’s house. Jess’s place was always open to her, and tonight she needed her sister’s company, but when she entered the kitchen via the back door, there was only Brian, her brother-in-law, pulling off his work boots.

  “Uh, hi, Ally.” He looked slightly perturbed at her sudden appearance.

  “Hi, Brian.” Ally’s gaze darted past him. Brian was a sweetie, but he was about as garrulous as a lamppost. “Is Jess around?”

  “She’s still picking the boys up from daycare. She’ll be back any minute.” He toed a boot off, leaving a crust of dirt on the floor. “Um, you all right?”

  I must really look strange, Ally thought, for Brian to say that. He was the type of guy who wouldn’t notice if she dyed her hair blond or started wearing glasses.

  “Actually, I’m not all right,” she said, unable to contain her frothing emotions any longer. “I’ve had some bad news this afternoon that’s really got me worried. I don’t know how I’m going to handle it.”

  Brian stood, alarm spreading across his blunt features. “Oh yeah, the wedding. We heard about that.”

  “You did? Already?” She blinked at him in surprise.

  “Your nana called Jess this afternoon…”

  “Nana! I should have guessed.” Her grandma lived nearby in a retirement village, a hotbed of gossip, so by now the news would be halfway across the continent.

  A rubber toy squeaked under Brian’s foot as he moved toward her.
“It’s bad news but, um, these things happen…” He listed from side to side, gave her an awkward little pat on the shoulder. “You mustn’t be too upset, y’know…”

  She gaped at him. Brian was a man’s man. He toiled all day, played rugby on the weekends, and the only cooking he did was on a barbecue. Now, he was sounding like a Dear Abby columnist because he thought she was too fragile to cope with the news of Seth’s wedding. Because she knew he didn’t—really didn’t—want to see her break into tears, especially with Jess not around.

  “Oh, Brian, I’m not upset about the wedding! It’s not like I’ve been pining for Seth all these years. It was a shock hearing about it, yes, but…” But she would have handled it if it hadn’t been for Nate sauntering into her shop, looking at her in that derisive way, calling her a…a prissy Goody Two-shoes. Is that how he really saw her? How everyone saw her? A stitched-up prude with no sense of humor and all the attraction of plain low-fat yogurt? Without warning, a lump rose in her throat, her chin started to quiver, and—oh, no—hot moisture dammed up behind her eyes.

  “Oh! Ah…ah…” Brian shuffled about, his brow contorted, big hands flapping uselessly. He dove for a box of tissues and thrust it under her nose with a mute plea.

  Sniffing, Ally waved away the tissues and swiped her fingers across her eyes. She couldn’t do this to poor Brian. Especially when he thought her tears were for Seth. They weren’t. They were for herself, for the way Nate had made her feel.

  The back door creaked, and two toddlers burst into the room, followed by Ally’s sister.

  “Jess! You’re back!” Brian’s voice throbbed with relief. He dropped the box of tissues and hurried toward his wife and twin boys. “Why don’t I give the boys their bath tonight?” Wedging a toddler under each arm, he dashed off without waiting for a reply.

  Jess hefted two shopping bags onto the kitchen counter and frowned after her husband. “What’s up with him? He hardly ever volunteers for bath time.” Then she glanced at Ally. “Oh, no. What did he say to you?”

  “Nothing.” Ally dashed the back of her hand across her eyes one last time.