by Joan Kilby
“When can you get away?” Graham countered, loading up his plate indiscriminately.
“I haven’t said I’d come,” she demurred. “I’ve got a big job on.”
“Which is why I’m asking when is convenient for you,” he replied evenly.
Back at their table, Maeve sipped her chardonnay. “Are you still working locum?” She’d never understood why a talented doctor would content himself with temporary work, but that had been Graham’s way for as long as she’d known him.
He nodded. “Got a cushy gig over on Chapel Street at the moment. You should see the parade of gorgeous women who go through my consulting rooms with their Gucci shoes and three-hundred-dollar haircuts.”
“How nice for you,” she said with a cool smile. “Maybe you’ll find yourself a rich wife to finance your trips.”
“Hey, don’t even think I would hook up with one of those society babes. If I ever divorced, the alimony payments would force me to work twelve months out of the year.” His gaze softened. “Did I tell you how great you look?”
Maeve put down her fork. “Why did you really ask me here today, Graham?”
He rubbed his smooth-shaven jaw, setting free the scent of his aftershave, and his mouth below his handlebar mustache settled into what she thought of as his “serious” expression. “I want us to try again.”
She found herself thinking not of his suggestion but of how cool his eyes were compared with Will’s, even though both men’s irises were blue.
“Well?” he said.
“We’ve done a good job parting amicably,” she said. “Let’s quit while we’re ahead.”
“I mean it, Maeve. I’m willing to settle down now. I want to do that with you.”
“Settle down? A minute ago you were talking about taking off to Fiji.” She pushed away her empty plate. A waiter in white shirt and black pants glided forward and removed it.
“For a brief trip. Kind of like a second honeymoon. Then when we get back, we do the playing-house thing.” He smiled, boyishly eager and charming. “Neither of us is getting any younger, Maeve. What do you say? Give it another go?”
“Graham! I haven’t seen you in years. You can’t just lob in here and ask me to marry you. Again.” She leveled her eyes at him. “At least, I presume you’re asking me to marry you.”
“Absolutely. Yes, I am. Without a doubt.”
He dropped his eyes under her skeptical gaze. When he looked up again, his face seemed older, and vulnerable in a way she’d never seen it before.
“I miss you, babe.”
Maeve knew every phony countenance in his repertoire, but she’d never seen anything quite like the expression now on his face. This was sincerity, she realized with a shock. “Oh, Graham.”
“We could have another baby,” he said softly. “You were such a great mother—”
“Stop!” She absolutely did not want to break down in the middle of the restaurant.
“Sorry.” His hand closed over hers.
She dragged in a deep breath. “You say you want to settle down, but where? You can’t raise babies on a sailboat, and you’d hate my cottage in Mount Eliza.”
“I bought a place in Brighton. I’ve joined the ranks of rate payers and home owners.”
“You bought a house?” she asked dubiously.
“Well, more like a condo. But it’s right on the beach. You’ll love it.”
“There’s room for my greenhouse on the balcony, is there? Are you sure your fancy neighbors wouldn’t mind my mulcher parked out front?”
“There you go with the sarcasm again,” Graham complained. “Look, Maeve, fighting me isn’t going to bring Kristy back.” He held her hand firmly when she would have tugged it away. “I’ve dated lots of women since we broke up, but no one special. At least, we had fun together. Didn’t we?”
For one fatalistic moment she contemplated saying “Yes,” right then and there. They’d both grown up some. He had been a good father, if a little erratic. And she was never going to have the man she really wanted. But… “Kristy’s death was only the catalyst for our breakup. I have a different life now.”
“Have you got a boyfriend?”
“No,” she said slowly. “But I’ve got roots and they’re growing deeper all the time. You’re still floating around, literally as well as figuratively. Sure, you’ve bought a place to live, but it’s a condo, not a family home. Something you can easily rent out when you get the urge to take off on your sailboat again.”
Graham put his hand over his heart. “If you want a house, I’ll buy you one. I’ve changed, Maeve. I really have.”
“I don’t know…” Reuniting would be so easy in some ways. Especially if he was willing to work at their marriage now, instead of hoisting sail every time they had a fight.
A hopeful smile curved his lips. “You don’t have to say yes or no today. Just promise me you’ll think about it.”
She gave him back a half smile. “Okay.”
MAEVE PLACED the last of the gardenia bushes in the garden bed bordering the pool and shoveled earth around the root ball. Tight greeny-white buds interspersed the shiny leaves. With luck and continuing warm weather, they should still be blooming for Will and Ida’s wedding.
Thinking of Ida, Maeve tamped the dirt around the base of the plant with her boot a little harder than necessary. She’d really liked Ida, difficult as that was considering her feelings toward Will. When she thought of how bad Will would feel if he knew about Ida’s lover, Maeve’s heart ached for him.
She tossed the shovel aside and slit open a bag of fertilizer, then sprinkled granules around the base of the gardenia bushes. Should she tell him? If she was engaged and someone saw her fiancé passionately kissing another woman on the Swanston Street Bridge, she would want to know. Or should female loyalty make her hold her tongue? After all, Will might not thank her for enlightening him. Might hate her, in fact, not only as the bearer of bad news but for witnessing his humiliation. Yet if telling meant saving him from worse hurt farther down the track, wasn’t that worth the risk? Once his garden was finished, she wouldn’t see Will or Ida again, anyway.
“So this is going to be the moonlight garden.” Will’s mellow voice sounded behind her. “It looks good by day.”
Maeve straightened with a start. “I didn’t notice you walk up.”
“You did seem awfully absorbed. What do you think about when you’re gardening?” he asked, hands in the pockets of his shorts.
“Oh, this and that.” He looked…happy. “Having a good day?”
“Getting that way.” His gaze lingered on her face a moment before moving around the pool to the freshly weeded rockery on the other side. “What are you going to put in there?”
“One of the most beautiful and amazing plants in the world,” she told him enthusiastically, her troubled thoughts forgotten for the moment. “Selenicereus grandiflorus, the Queen of the Night, named for the moon goddess. It flowers one night a year during a full moon, when it gives off intense bursts of vanilla-like perfume. The flowers are a foot across, with petals of purest white surrounded by spikes of bright gold.”
“Sounds like a rare plant.” He grinned teasingly. “What aspect of my personality are you expressing with it?”
Maeve realized with a jolt that the Selenicereus wasn’t so much an expression of Will’s inner self as it was of hers. Avoiding his question, she said, “My friend Rose knows someone who grows them. The full moon is toward the end of the month. With luck, the one I plant could flower around the time of your wedding.”
Mentioning his wedding made Maeve’s throat close up. Will, too, became oddly quiet.
At last he glanced at his watch. “I’d better get going. I’m off to mow my mother’s lawn.”
“I’m finished here for the day. I’ll leave, as well.” She began to pile her tools into her wheel-barrow, reluctant, suddenly, to part from him.
“Let me help,” Will said, reaching for the bag of fertilizer just as she di
d.
Their hands touched. Separated. And met again. Their eyes held, inches apart.
“Thanks,” Maeve muttered, and snatched her fingers away. She bent for her trowel, cheeks burning.
Without a word, Will picked up the wheelbarrow and trundled it across the lawn toward her ute. Maeve followed more slowly, feeling the heat gradually fade from her cheeks.
By the time she reached the vehicles, Will was loading her barrow into the back of the ute. “You don’t have to do that—” she began, then broke off as she noticed the ancient, rusted lawn mower in the back of his open trunk. “Does that piece of scrap metal even work?”
He gave her a wry grin. “Now you see why I hired a gardener for my place. I’ve tried to convince my mother to do the same but…” He shrugged. “It makes her feel good that I do it.”
Maeve stripped off her gloves and tossed them into the wheelbarrow. “Where does your mother live?”
“Mornington.”
“I’d like to meet her.” His eyebrows raised. “Research,” she explained, smiling. “I can’t pass up an opportunity to pump your mother for information about your childhood.” She pulled her car keys out of her pants pocket. “I’ll mow her lawn for you,” she added when he eyed her dubiously.
“I haven’t been there for a while,” he said. “The grass will be a mile high.”
“All the more reason to use my superior equipment.” She climbed into her truck and started the motor. “Come on, Beaumont. What are you waiting for?”
“SHE’S VERY STRONG,” Phyllis, coffee in one hand, cigarette in the other, observed from her front steps.
Will, about to restart Maeve’s electric trimmer, pushed up his safety glasses and followed Phyllis’s gaze to the far side of the yard, where Maeve was mowing through ankle-high grass as though she were vacuuming a carpet. “She’s an Amazon.”
Phyllis cast him a shrewd glance. “Ida seen her yet?”
Will wasn’t sure he liked his mother’s tone. “Ida’s met her, yes. She and Maeve get on quite well. What’s your point?”
“Nothing. Just…” Phyllis gestured to Maeve with her cigarette. “If I were Ida, I wouldn’t want my fiancé gazing at the gardener as if he didn’t know whether he wanted to worship her or jump her bones.”
“I do not want to jump her bones.” He jammed the safety glasses down on his face. “Or worship her.”
Phyllis squinted over a plume of smoke. “You might be able to fool yourself, but you can’t fool your mother.”
He stalked away to the sound of her wheezy laugh.
“Will,” she said sharply. He stopped and turned. Her face was dead serious. “Remember your promise.”
“I remember.” How could he forget?
He should never have let Maeve come here. He felt that even more keenly when he’d finished edging the lawn and returned to the house to find her and his mother side by side on the sofa, poring over an old photo album. With Maeve bent close to Phyllis, they looked for all the world like mother and daughter-in-law. Engrossed, they didn’t notice him standing in the doorway.
“There’s young Will and his father coming back from surfing,” Phyllis said. “Well, Will surfed. His father just drove him to the beach and waited. Lord knows what would have happened if Will Sr. had had to swim out to rescue him. Never could keep that kid out of the water. When he wasn’t up a tree, that is.” She turned a page. “There’s Will with his youngest brother and second sister. And there’s the whole boiling of ’em.”
“Four small children,” Maeve said. “How did you manage on your own?”
“Wasn’t easy. ’Course, half the time I felt like I had five kids. Ida was always around. She and Will were inseparable.”
“And now they’re getting married.”
Did Will only imagine the strain in Maeve’s voice? Or Phyllis’s penetrating look? Phyllis opened her mouth to speak.
Will felt a rush of adrenaline. Part of him wanted Maeve to know the truth; part of him was terrified. He started forward. “Mother,” he said, a warning in his voice.
Maeve glanced over at him. He got the oddest feeling that she’d known he was there all along. For one fleeting moment her gaze held an ineffable sadness. Then she put on her teasing smile. “You were a scruffy little chap.”
“I was adorable,” he replied, grinning immodestly.
“You were a scamp,” Phyllis said. “I’ll get you a cup of tea.” She shuffled off to the kitchen.
“Sorry yet that you asked?” he said to Maeve. He perched on the opposite arm of the couch from her.
“Not at all.” She smiled warmly. “Your mother’s nice. We’ve been having a very interesting conversation.”
“Is that so.” He slid off the arm and onto the sofa, keeping a good three feet between Maeve and him.
“You told me of the age gap between your parents, but looking at the photos made me realize your father was—” She broke off, embarrassed.
“Old?” The hollow ache his father’s memory always engendered expanded inside Will’s chest. “In many ways he was more like a grandfather than a father. Except that he didn’t have the time to spend with us kids that a grandfather might.” Will flipped through the pages of the album. “We had good times, though, my brothers and sister and I, as kids. We had one another.”
“I suppose coming from a big family, you want a lot of children yourself.” Her voice was enquiring, yet neutral.
“That’s the plan.” He paused. “What about you? Do you want children?”
“Me? Nah.” She spoke flippantly, but the flash of pain in her eyes made him wonder if she really felt was as casual as she sounded.
“You’ll regret not having them if you don’t,” Phyllis said, coming into the room with a third cup and a fresh pot of tea.
She settled the tea tray on the low table and poured a cup for Will, oblivious to Maeve’s silence. “My favorite stage was babyhood,” she rambled on. “Before they learn to answer back.”
Will frowned at her and gave a tiny shake of his head, though he didn’t know why Maeve was so bothered by talk of babies.
Phyllis, absorbed in pouring tea, paid no attention to his sign language. “Or maybe they’re cutest when they first learn to walk. Tottering around like little drunken soldiers.” She handed Maeve a cup of tea. “Maeve, darl’, you’re as white as a ghost!”
Will rose. “I think we’ve kept Maeve long enough.”
“I’m fine.” Maeve smiled tightly.
“Ida—now, she’s the type who blooms with pregnancy.” Phyllis hurried on, clearly trying to cover the awkwardness with more words. “Did you say you’ve met Ida?”
Maeve nodded and sipped her tea. “She’s lovely.”
Phyllis turned to Will. “How is Ida doing? Did the ultrasound check out all right?”
“Fine,” Will said. “Ida’s fine, too. Although she seems a little distracted lately—” He stopped when Maeve choked on her tea. “Are you okay?” He went to thump her on the back, but the blow turned into more of a caress. He glanced up to see his mother watching him over her glasses, and snatched his hand away.
“Ida will find motherhood quite a change from a busy law practice,” Maeve said when she’d recovered.
“At least, Will’s young enough to take an active role,” Phyllis said. “And he’ll be around to see them grow up.” She shook her head sadly. “It’s hard on a boy when his dad dies. It’s a shock, like. Makes it difficult for them to put their trust in someone again, to love someone again.”
Will put his cup down and got to his feet, uncomfortably aware of Maeve’s sympathetic gaze. Ida as a topic was bad enough, without Phyllis’s delving into his psyche with nothing to guide her but a mother’s intuition. “I need to get going, even if Maeve doesn’t.”
“I’d better go, too,” Maeve said, eyeing her watch. “Thank you so much for the tea, Mrs. Beaumont.”
“Call me Phyllis. Thank you for mowing my lawn. Come by for a cuppa anytime.”
&nbs
p; “’Bye, Mother,” Will said, kissing her on the cheek. “I’ll call you soon.”
He walked Maeve to her vehicle. “You seemed upset when my mother started talking about your having kids.”
Her face closed, like a flower folding in its petals at sundown. “It’s…personal.”
“I see,” he said, even though he saw only that she was in pain. He wished he could hold her, protect her. But all he could do was watch her slide into the driver’s seat of the ute.
She pulled the door shut and fastened her seat belt. “I have to work on another job for a couple of days,” she said through the open window. “I’ll see you later in the week. At the engagement party, if not before. Your gate is done and the fencer will come by to install it.”
His hand rested on the window ledge. “I should have your hydroponics regulator finished by then.” Not much, but it was something.
Her eyes turned very bright. Impulsively, she reached up and squeezed his fingers. “Thanks.”
Then, before he could say another word, she threw the ute in reverse and backed out of the driveway. As she drove away, Will lifted the hand she’d touched. And without thinking, brought it to his lips.
CHAPTER TEN
MAEVE ARRIVED LATE to Will and Ida’s engagement party. She would rather not have arrived at all. She was finding it harder and harder to be around Will and not reveal her feelings for him. But she wanted to talk to Ida.
The driveway was jammed with vehicles, and people had started to park on the front lawn. Maeve parked her ute on the grass, tucked her engagement present under her arm and walked up to the house. She was pleased to note that the flowers she’d planted in the stone urns were a riot of pink, yellow, purple and white.
At the steps to the house she paused to check her apricot-colored dress for bits of grass and to smooth back her hair, which she’d tied loosely at her nape. All of a sudden, her pulse was racing and her palms felt damp—the unaccustomed nervousness due, no doubt, to the prospect of seeing Will in a social setting. Today she couldn’t hide behind her plants, figuratively or literally.
