Nobody But Him

by Victoria Purman

  He turned and strode back to the table, leaving Lizzie open-mouthed in his wake.

  ‘Blackburn, is everything all right?’ His friend and architect David Winter sipped his scotch and raised his enormous grey eyebrows in concern. For the first time, Ry realised they looked like hairy caterpillars lurking on his forehead.

  ‘Sorry about that everyone. Just a minor crisis behind the bar that needed sorting out.’ He forced a smile. ‘Everyone ready to order?’

  ‘Yes, we’re starved! But let’s try to get someone else to serve us.’ Amanda propped her elbows on the table and rested her chin on her interlinked fingers. She threw Ry a huge smile and tossed her hair, giggling at her own joke.

  Ry turned away from her. ‘So David, tell me about the plans. Have you had the surveyors in yet?’

  Ry made sure to smile and nod at the appropriate intervals as David began describing, in great detail, the topography of the Fleurieu Peninsula and the implications for any housing development. Ry made sure to smile and nod because not one single syllable of what David was saying was making any sense. He might as well have been speaking Norwegian. The evening had gone straight to hell, and Ry knew he was trapped at the table with his architect, David’s wife Annie and their daughter Amanda, who was now gazing into his eyes and laughing way too loud.

  As he watched them chatter and make decisions about dinner, debate the relative merits of the kangaroo fillet or the Asian-inspired crispy fish, his mind was a million miles and fifteen years back.

  Surfing, sunscreen, salty chips and sex.

  Julia Jones.

  CHAPTER

  2

  Julia leaned over the hand basin, filled her cupped hands with water and splashed her face for the second time. Droplets hung from her nose, her eyelashes and the ringlets on either side of her face that refused to be confined in a ponytail. The jolt of it was nothing like the electric shock she’d just had.

  He’s out there.

  She took a quick glance in the mirror, hoping the second splash of water hadn’t smudged her mascara into panda eyes. No, it was still intact and she looked away. She didn’t want to judge what the anxious look on her face was all about. She pressed her shaking palms onto her blazing cheeks, closed her eyes and let out a deep breath. She felt sick, and the mysterious pounding in her chest seemed to be related to her sudden inability to breathe.

  How long had it been? Fifteen years? Ry looked older, of course, but time had been incredibly kind. Hell, not just kind, she had to admit. Like the best wine, he’d improved with age. Damn it. Did he have to look so good? He was a man now, not the lanky teenager she’d known, physically stronger than she remembered, more imposing, bigger, somehow. His eyes were still that intense, almost transparent blue she recognised, but when he’d turned them on her in a cold, hard glare just now, she’d noticed the dark shadows under them.

  She was worried about having left Lizzie in the lurch but needed just a few seconds more to stop and breathe. Just one more minute to get it together, that’s all I need. And I’ll go right back out there to face my demons.

  Who was Ryan Blackburn now? Was he married? Julia couldn’t remember seeing a wedding ring on his finger, but that was hardly surprising, given the five seconds she’d spent staring at him before performing her disappearing act into the ladies’ loo. And what about The Princess. Was that pert young thing at the table his wife? Fifteen years was a long time and Julia figured that a man like him would surely be married, and be in possession of the regulation sandstone villa in the leafy suburbs, the appropriate number of tousle-haired blond children and a chocolate labrador. And when the family wasn’t tumbling around in the landscaped gardens of their perfect suburban hideaway, they would drive down to Middle Point in their late-model Volvo to spend time in their million-dollar weekender with their beautifully dressed friends and their designer children.

  She suddenly felt relieved. Crass generalisations did save time after all.

  ‘Julia?’ The door swung open and Lizzie poked her head around it.

  ‘Yeah, I’m in here,’ Julia replied, her voice shaky.

  Lizzie walked in, let the door close behind her and stopped short at the sight of her friend. ‘God, you look terrible. Oh no, don’t tell me you’ve got the lurgy too? Here I was blaming the Gen Ys for being soft.’

  Lizzie looked into the mirror at their reflections. Julia’s dark curls and pale skin contrasted with Lizzie’s tanned blondeness and Julia envied the fact that she still looked like the perfect beach babe, even at thirty-two.

  Julia gave her head a little shake. ‘No, I don’t have the lurgy.’

  ‘That’s a relief, but something happened at Table 13, right?’

  Julia brushed her palms against her black skirt, trying to divert Lizzie’s attention. As if that was going to work. Not for the first time that night, she created a smile out of nowhere.

  ‘Nothing happened. Why do you ask?’

  ‘Well, apparently you can’t work here ever again. You’re sacked and I’m pissed off.’

  Julia’s head was a jumble. Nothing about the evening was making sense. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I’m already short a waitress on a long weekend Saturday night and now Ryan-bloody-Blackburn’s sacked you. He thinks just because he’s gorgeous he can get away with shit like that.’ Lizzie shook her head in disbelief, then paused, narrowed her eyes suspiciously at her best friend. ‘Oh yeah. And he seems to know you, by the way.’

  Julia felt a pulse throb in her head, struggled a little to find the words. ‘I know I’ve been gone a long time, Lizzie, but when I last lived in this town, customers didn’t have the gall to start telling pubs who they can and can’t employ. What an enormous jerk.’ What an enormous handsome jerk.

  Lizzie laughed in frustration. ‘Jools … you’re not listening. God’s gift to women out there? With the shoulders? He owns this place.’

  A million questions popped like firecrackers in Julia’s head. She took a calming breath and fished around for the most important one.

  ‘Whoa. Wait a minute. What did you say?’ Pressing her index fingers to each temple was doing nothing for the throbbing.

  ‘Which part don’t you understand? The God’s gift part, or maybe the shoulders …’

  Julia steadied herself. ‘Did you say that Ry Blackburn owns the Middle Point pub?’

  ‘Yeah, for a month now.’ Lizzie’s face creased in confusion. ‘Hang on, Jools. Nothing about tonight is making any sense to me. Are you going to tell me how you know him?’

  Clutching her stomach, Julia sank back against the basin, wondering where the hell to start that particular story. She’d never revealed any of it to Lizzie, and standing in the ladies’ loo with terribly unflattering overhead fluorescent lighting didn’t seem like the right place to tell her. That particular story needed a long lunch, comfy chairs and at least three bottles of wine.

  ‘Let’s just say we knew each other once, a really long time ago.’ Julia could see questions on Lizzie’s face but was thankful her friend knew her well enough not to push.

  ‘Okay then. He wants me to pay you for tonight and throw you some extra for your trouble.’

  Julia grinned wryly, took a deep breath. ‘I don’t think there’s enough money in the world for my troubles.’

  Lizzie grabbed her in a tight hug and planted a loud kiss on each cheek.

  ‘Tomorrow. You. Me. A four-course meal of spag bol, white wine, red wine and chocolate, I promise. But you have to promise to tell me everything. Right now, I need to get back out there.’

  ‘Of course you do. I’m so sorry about tonight.’ Julia managed a sad smile.

  ‘It’s not your fault. Will it make you feel better if we workshop some form of revenge?’ Lizzie winked at her as she pulled the door open.

  Julia smiled. After all these years, her best friend still knew exactly the right thing to say.

  It was icy and blustery on the streets of Middle Point but Julia was glad of the te
n-minute walk home in the dark.

  Above her, the streetlights flickered, crackling on and off in electrical spasms, shuddering as the wind swung the power lines back and forth. The throb of the ocean’s waves calmed her, as ever, and she took in the salty trace of the ocean in the air. In the morning she knew she would be able to stare out to sea again, but at this time of night, it was nothing but a mysterious blackness, unlit by street lights or any big city’s luminous haze. She could easily hide in this darkness.

  She needed time to clear her head. After talking with Lizzie, she’d grabbed her bag and coat and left the pub through the back door, navigating her way through the dimly lit car park to the side laneway and then out on to the esplanade. No, it hadn’t been a coward’s retreat, she’d convinced herself, but the safest way out of the place. How could she leave through the dining room and risk locking eyes with Ry? Her convenient escape would guarantee she could slip away unnoticed, at no risk of seeing him ever again. She still had some stubborn pride, after all, which she feared would be sorely tested if she were forced to slink past Ry, his wife and in-laws on the way out. A walk of shame from the sacked maidservant. That’s how city people had viewed her when she was a teenager serving them at the general store. Just another anonymous, interchangeable local girl there for the service of the holidaymakers and the weekenders.

  More things had changed about him than just the width of his shoulders, she decided, as she walked along the empty streets of Middle Point. He’d moved on, created a life. Why wouldn’t he have? And lucky for Julia, she wasn’t the same person she was at eighteen, either. She’d come so far, left so much behind except, apparently, the memories of him that came crowding in now.

  For fifteen years, she’d lived in another city eight hundred kilometres away and had felt safe in the knowledge that she’d never see Ry Blackburn again. She’d planned it well, knowing that after she’d escaped from Middle Point, the chances of turning a street corner in Melbourne and bumping into Ry were somewhere between none and Buckley’s. The odds were apparently not so good now she was back in her hometown.

  What she couldn’t figure out was, what was he doing back here? And why the hell had he bought the Middle Point Pub? While she knew she could get some more answers out of Lizzie, Julia also felt torn. Did she really want to know every gory detail about him, his wife and family and the labrador? Wouldn’t it be easier for both of them if she just did what she had to do and flew back home?

  They were questions she would think about tomorrow. For now, she had to make sure she had a plan in place to avoid him for the rest of her stay. She wasn’t back for long, so how hard could that be? Staying away from the pub? Easy. The town of Port Elliot was only a few kilometres down the road anyway and she could simply drive right there, once she’d borrowed Lizzie’s car, and get everything she needed.

  Julia smiled to herself. Crisis averted. That’s why they pay you the big bucks, Jones. And don’t forget it.

  She flipped up the collar of her vintage woollen coat to protect herself from the harsh wind and watched her breath cloud into the night air. After so many years in Melbourne, with its famed four seasons in one day, this weather didn’t really feel that cold at all. It was nothing like Melbourne cold, which seeped into your bones and settled there all winter. But that was a minor thing to cope with, considering everything else she loved about her adopted city. And soon she’d be back there. That day couldn’t come soon enough.

  Julia’s footsteps crunched noisily on the gravel driveway as she turned into her mother’s place, and unlocked the front door. Inside she flicked on the light in the living area and took a look around.

  She was about to make one of the hardest decisions of her life. What to do with this house now her mother was gone.

  She shrugged off her coat, tossed it onto the orange vinyl sofa, toed of the horrible black flatties she’d borrowed from Lizzie and stopped to consider if she needed coffee or wanted wine instead. So maybe caffeine wasn’t the best idea, particularly when she was trying not to think so much, but reaching for a bottle of wine to calm down probably wasn’t wise either.

  When she glanced at the little kitchen, a memory came back unbidden and she squeezed her eyes shut to try to suppress it. Her mother, standing in the small 1970s-inspired space, holding a cup of coffee, warming her hands against the bitter winter southerlies. Just remembering her mother’s smile, the way her blue eyes laughed, brought an ache to Julia’s chest and her eyes threatened tears. Again. It had been a year and she still saw her mother in every corner of every room. Since she’d been back in Middle Point, back in the house she’d grown up in, she’d been swamped with memories, those perfect moments in time with her mother, the scents of her childhood and so many déjà vu moments that she was constantly overwhelmed and emotional.

  Which was not going to help her do what she needed to do.

  And once again, the words were in her head.

  Make a decision, Julia.

  She twisted the knob on the stove and pushed the lid firmly onto the top of the kettle. The electric plate on the stove glowed and reddened, and she spread her palms out, hoping it would warm her hands as well as the water.

  Why was this so hard? She was a crisis management consultant, for God’s sake. Her high-powered Melbourne job involved advising high flyers and top end companies when they found themselves in delicate predicaments, when they were juggling calamity, corruption or scandal. She was used to making literally hundreds of snap decisions for people when they were too freaked out to think straight, when their reputations or share prices were on the line. She’d earned kudos for her calm, clear head and her dead-on instinct. She was worth every dollar she was paid — and she was paid a lot of them.

  So what had happened? Since she’d been back, she’d been all at sea. All those personal virtues she was so proud of seemed to have vanished the minute she crossed the state border three days before.

  It was a chilly, gusty dawn. Ry’s running shoes pounded the white wet sand as he took step after jarring step on his twelve-kilometre morning run from Middle Point to Goolwa and back. He’d started running a year ago. His GP had told him he needed to do something for his stress. Yoga, running, anything. He’d chosen running and it had worked, helped him cope with the pressure of work, and he’d been sleeping better too. That alone was enough to convince him to keep it up. Running on the beach was no hardship, despite the cold, because he was almost always alone at this time of the morning. The silence, the crash of the waves, the fresh air. He liked it a lot.

  When Ry reached the steps to the lookout on top of Middle Point, he took them two by two in great, strong strides, twenty-five of them, until he hit the top one. As he caught his breath, he turned and took in the view. Even in the winter, there was so much to love about the south coast of the Fleurieu Peninsula. To the east, the ribbon of coastline snaked away into the hazy distance, the sea spray blurring the view like an Impressionist’s painting. Down in the water, surfers dotted the waves near the point, out further than swimmers would dare venture. No matter what time of year, the diehards wrapped themselves from head to toe in black neoprene and straddled their boards, waiting patiently for the best swells. Some people just loved this part of the world unconditionally and Ry was one of them. He’d learned to love it just as much as his parents had. While they’d always lived in the city, they’d spent holidays at Middle Point, coming down from Adelaide almost every summer when he was younger, paddling in the shallows as a toddler, bodyboarding as a kid, and then surfing as a teenager.

  Surfing. It was something he hadn’t done in too many years to count. He needed to get back out there, now more than ever.

  Shit. He’d hoped the run would serve to clear his head, to get rid of the crap that had kept him up most of the night.

  Julia.

  The ghost who’d sashayed right into pub, in the cold heart of winter, in the town he was investing his time, energy and cold hard cash in. Except, she wasn’t a ghost or a me
mory or a bad dream any more.

  Behind him, a vintage panel van started up, it’s engine croaky in the morning cold, and the sound of it shot him back fifteen years. When he’d watched Julia drive away, vowing never to come back. To Middle Point. Or to him.

  So what the hell was she doing back here?

  Ry launched himself down the wooden steps and back to the beach, his pace accelerating to meet his pounding pulse. In all those years he hadn’t seen her or heard from her once. Not once. He’d thought she was gone for good. Out of this town, out of the state, out of his life.

  But all it took was to see her face again, that body hidden inside the black and white waitresses uniform, to bring back a sense memory of what it had felt like to touch her, to hold her, to make love to her. To be the centre of his world.

  That world had come crashing down when she left. And he’d never forgiven her. Ry glanced at his watch and picked up the pace as he headed for home. He’d been good at keeping his emotions in check in the past few years. He’d have no trouble doing the same where Julia Jones was concerned, keeping her out of his head.

  One step in front of the other, one heartbeat, then another. Ry let the pounding of his feet take him over.

  Where the hell am I? Julia blinked her eyes open. A purple chenille bedspread. A venetian blind straining and failing to keep out the dull morning light. A 1960s orange-hued oil painting of a tropical sunset. A macramé pot holder hanging from one corner of the room, a bunch of dried lavender blossoming out of it.

  She propped herself up on her elbows and yawned sleepily. She was surrounded by a house full of her mother’s stuff, none of which would add to its selling appeal. Julia knew she couldn’t put it on the market the way it was. If she decided to sell it. Who wanted 1970s beach décor anyway? All the new homes along the coast were white and Scandinavian in style, full of bleached wood furniture and reproduction Eames chairs, designer black and white prints hanging on the walls and artfully designed printed curtains. No one would want her mother’s orange vinyl sofa, which was sticky and sweaty in summer and arctic-cold in winter, or the scuffed teak veneer furniture that was dotted around the room. It would all have to go. But even the thought of dumping anything from the house brought a lump to Julia’s throat.