TWO
Two
Bel pulled into her driveway. Home . The day had dragged on forever, and she was already picturing a long, hot soak in the tub, then a hot date in bed with her book. After devouring the latest Lexington Millionaires book, she always went back to the beginning of the series to reread her favourites; it helped dull the pain of realising she now had to wait over a year until the next release.
A text message sounded. ‘Please make sure you read over your wedding-day timetable.’ Followed immediately by upbeat, emoji-filled replies from some of Larkin’s other bridesmaids.
Bel rolled her eyes as her phone pinged again, but this one was from Emma. ‘See you soon!’ Shit. Bugger. Bum! The dinner thing. She’d forgotten all about it.
The image of her bubble bath faded from her mind. She dragged herself inside, dumping her handbag on the hall table with a low curse. She hated socialising with a passion. She dealt with people all day, and the last thing she wanted to do after work was go out and be all chatty, even if it was with her best friend and her family. She just wanted to read her book. Was that too much to ask?
Emma and Craig’s property, Fernvale, was only a half-hour drive, but it felt like an eternity tonight, when she would rather be at home. Still, she thought as she started the car up again, it was always a nice drive out their way, the wideopen paddocks stretching for miles either side of the narrow bitumen road before it turned to dirt for the last five or so kilometres of her journey to her friend’s front gate.
Her faithful old Subaru rattled and shook her about as it crossed the cattle grid that led to the long driveway lined with Japanese maple trees, which would put on the most amazing show of red, orange and yellow leaves come autumn, and eventually led to a ramshackle brick and fibro farmhouse. It had started as a small cottage and grown to a sprawling monstrosity over the last five generations. Emma and Craig, along with their four children, had lived there since Craig’s parents had retired to the coast three years ago.
Bel glanced at the dusty ute in the driveway as she pulled up and narrowed her eyes. Why was Dean Preston’s vehicle here? Before she could think any further, the screen door opened and Emma came out, followed by her brood of children and a very excited Blue Heeler.
‘Jack! Get down!’ Emma yelled among the chaos of children running with a chorus of ‘Aunt Bel’s here,’ and ‘Come and see my bedroom,’ from the older kids, and ‘Pick me up!’ from Lucy.
With her displeasure at discovering she had been set up effectively defused by strategically placed children, Bel had no option but to be carried inside by a wave of small bodies with smiling faces. It was nearly impossible to stay mad around them, but she sent her friend a look that promised they’d be talking later.
It was close to twenty minutes later by the time Bel had successfully inspected said bedrooms with new doona covers and been presented with an array of artwork done for her at preschool and been given a personal introduction to Ben’s new stick insect pets, which she would be having nightmares about for the next week at least. By the time she came out, Emma and Craig were sitting out on the back deck with Dean, drinking beer.
‘They let you escape?’ Craig said, standing up to get her a drink.
‘For now,’ Bel said. Her gaze briefly went to Dean as she greeted him with a nod.
‘Now we’re all here, I’ll put the barbie on,’ Craig said as he handed Bel a glass of wine. The beauty of having been friends with the same people all your life is they know you so well. The downside to having been friends with the same people all your life is that, well … they know you so well …
‘Before you get mad,’ Emma said as soon as the two men headed for the opposite end of the deck to start cooking, ‘Craig invited him without telling me. I couldn’t very well uninvite him, could I?’
‘You could have mentioned it to me,’ Bel pointed out.
‘And have you make up some convenient excuse not to come? I don’t think so. Relax. Craig will keep him occupied and you won’t have to say a word to each other.’
Half an hour and another wedding-related text later, this one saying ‘Remember to drink lots of water, ladies! Keep that complexion fresh and those fine lines away!’, Bel was seated at the long table on the verandah, happily surrounded by the kids. She let Emma and Craig carry the majority of the adult conversation.
‘So, fill us in, Dean,’ Emma said as she finished cutting a slice of meat into smaller pieces for her youngest. ‘You’ve been gone a while.’
‘About ten years or so.’
‘Where have you been and what have you been doing since you left town? We don’t get many people coming back once they’ve made the great escape.’
‘I went away to ag college down south, then worked for a few years on some big properties in the Northern Territory and Central Queensland. Then some mine work for a bit.’ He shrugged. ‘Then decided to come back to work the old man’s place.’
‘I was sorry to hear about your dad passing. That must have been a bit of a shock?’ Emma asked.
‘Yeah, it was. He was a stubborn old bastard, I guess it shouldn’t have been a surprise that he’d ignored the doctors and kept pushing himself,’ Dean said, declining the sauce bottle that was being passed around the table.
‘Does that mean you’re home for good, or are you planning on selling?’ Emma asked.
‘For good, I suppose. Dad and I never really got along—he was still pissed off that I left in the first place, so I wasn’t expecting to come back any time soon. But now, I guess all the stuff I went away to learn will finally come in handy, even if he isn’t here to see it. I’ve got some big plans to upgrade the systems we use and do things differently.’
Bel suspected he was underplaying the significance of his father’s passing in favour of the typical, she’ll-be-right bravado used by a lot of the men she knew. There was being strong and manly, and there was being emotionally stunted. A real man knew it was healthy to show emotion—like Jax, when his Marine Corp father figure/mentor was thrown from a helicopter by that bastard Jenner in book two. Jax had openly wept, showing a strength of character that had been far more powerful than simply burying his grief and taking it out on a rampage of murder and revenge … which, admittedly, he had done by the end of the book. But still. Bel felt her eyes threaten to water at the memory. Poor Jax.
‘And you haven’t been married?’
‘Jesus, Em, we didn’t invite him over to be interviewed. Give the poor bastard a break.’
‘What? I’m only going to be asking you all this after he leaves anyway, and you’ll just say, “I don’t know, I didn’t ask,” so I’m cutting out the middleman.’
Bel bit back a grin. She couldn’t fault Emma’s logic.
Dean gave a surprised chuckle. ‘It’s okay, I haven’t got anything too interesting to tell you about. Never married. Came close. She was a top sort, but she didn’t want to live on a farm, so that ended that.’
Emma leaned forward slightly in her seat and Bel knew she was about to dig a little deeper into this new information, but just then a fight broke out between Ben and Ivy over the tomato sauce bottle, effectively derailing further questioning as Emma was forced to play referee.
‘What about you, Bel?’ Dean asked after a short pause. ‘How come you’re still here?’
Bel glanced up, surprised to be drawn into the conversation. ‘Where else would I be?’
‘I don’t know, maybe anywhere else? There can’t be that much to do out here.’
‘Bel took care of her gran for a long time,’ Emma cut in smoothly when Bel didn’t immediately answer.
‘I like it here,’ Bel said, wondering why she felt so defensive all of a sudden.
‘Not that there’s anything wrong with working in a service station, but I always thought you wanted to do more,’ Dean said.
Bel had a memory of her younger self declaring she couldn’t wait to leave this place and do something amazing . Thinking back on it now, she had a funny feeling she’d actually said that to Dean one time, after he’d said something stupid to her in class. And here they were, years later, and he’d been the one who’d left town and had experiences and come back full of adventures, while she was … working at Dwyers’. ‘Life doesn’t always work out the way we planned,’ Bel mumbled, lowering her eyes from his.
‘So, Dean, have you picked a side?’ Emma asked.
‘Sorry?’ he said, tearing his gaze from Bel.
‘I assume you’ve heard about the current issue that’s dividing the town? Which mascot we want for the town’s statue. Have you voted?’ Emma asked.
‘Voted?’ Dean echoed.
‘On which mascot we’re choosing.’
Dean looked across at Craig and shook his head. ‘I don’t know anything about it.’
‘Are you serious? It’s the only thing people are talking about,’ Emma said.
‘I don’t really stay in town long when I come in.’
‘Well, we need everyone’s input, so next time you’re in town, drop into the tourist information kiosk in the foyer of the pub and vote for which “big thing” you’d prefer.’
‘Big thing?’ he asked, kinking an eyebrow.
‘Yeah. For the mascot. You know—big things that make towns famous. The Big Banana, the Big Pineapple,’ Emma explained. ‘We’ve been raising money to go along with a grant we received to build a statue of ours in town.’
‘What are our choices?’
‘It’s been narrowed down to two. The Big Burger, after the famous line of hamburgers Bob Baxter serves at the truck stop on the road out of town.’
‘Or the Big Cock,’ Craig jumped in with a grin.
‘The big what?’ Dean asked, his eyes widening, which made Bel smirk slightly.
‘ Rooster ,’ Emma corrected her husband. ‘Elvis Peckley. Clement Rhodes bred him back in the fifties. He’s officially in the Guinness Book of World Records as the biggest rooster ever recorded. I think it’s pretty amazing that little old Wessex has a world record.’
‘Seriously?’ Dean said, eyeing the others as though waiting for the joke.
‘Yep. Still unbeaten,’ Craig nodded.
‘Must be some big rooster.’
‘He’s on display in the museum,’ Emma informed him.
‘They stuffed the poor bastard,’ Craig said, shaking his head.
‘How come I’ve never heard of this?’ Dean asked, frowning.
‘None of us had until about eighteen months ago, when Elvis was donated to the museum by the Rhodes family and the historical society did some research on it,’ Emma said.
‘I’m leaning towards the burger myself,’ Craig informed his friend.
‘As long as you’ll be okay sleeping out in the shed if you do,’ Emma said lightly, reaching across her husband for the salt shaker.
‘Oh, come on. Tourists like burgers.’
‘And just how are we supposed to promote said burgers, with names like the “Ring Burner” and the “Heart Attack”?’
‘It’s hilarious,’ Craig chuckled. ‘Trust me, the tourists will flock here to try one.’
‘The tourists can discover Bob Baxter’s burgers when they come out to see Elvis,’ Emma said.
‘I think you’re missing out on a winning drawcard,’ Craig said, tucking back into his meal.
‘Elvis has been around a lot longer than Bob Baxter,’ Emma said, closing the subject.
‘I’ll make sure I check it out next time I’m in town,’ Dean promised.
After the meal, Emma went to put the younger kids to bed and Bel started packing the dishwasher. She didn’t know how her friend did it, running a household with four kids under seven, as well as the farm work that needed doing when Craig was away working off property. Bel came out occasionally for a sleepover to keep her company and do what she could to help out, but Emma managed to run a tight ship. The kids all had their routines and she was one of the most organised people Bel knew—always cooking and prepping meals and school lunches. It was exhausting just watching her some days. But her friend seemed to thrive on it. For as long as Bel could remember, Emma had said she couldn’t wait to be a mum. Bel on the other hand still had no clue what she wanted. Sometimes she felt like a colossal failure, twenty-nine years old and still living in the same town she’d grown up in.
It hadn’t been the plan. She’d been ready to leave a few times over the years, and felt the urge to maybe go to university and do something different … marketing or promoting, maybe even get into advertising, writing or …
Well, there’d been endless possibilities, but then her gran’s health had declined, and—despite Gran telling her she didn’t want Bel staying for her sake—there was no way Bel was leaving her. Her uncle and aunt were never going to be any comfort. If they’d had to, they probably would have hired someone to sit with her or clean the house now and then, but Bel couldn’t think of a more depressing or lonely life for Gran. So she had stayed and she hadn’t regretted it, not ever.
By the time Gran had passed, Bel’s burning ambition to go explore the world dimmed. If she were being completely honest with herself, she’d gotten to the point where the thought of leaving everything she was familiar with scared her.
It was stupid. Logically, she knew there was nothing to be afraid of, but there just wasn’t anything she wanted to do badly enough to compel her to step outside her comfort zone. She didn’t need much. She’d inherited Gran’s little brick cottage, she had a job and a reliable car. She could afford to shop whenever she felt the need to splurge a little, but honestly, she really didn’t want anything. Except books—they were her only real passion. She’d always been okay with things the way they were. At least, until lately.
It was when she’d look at Emma and Craig together that she’d sometimes get a pang of loneliness in the pit of her stomach. Sure, it would be nice to have someone of her own, to love her and look at her the way Craig looked at Emma, but she wasn’t going to find that here in Wessex—and leaving what she had here for the off-chance she might find that out there, somewhere? That was a big risk, and she was no longer the starry-eyed teenager who thought heading out into the big wide world was some exciting adventure. Did she really want to look for a new job? Meet new friends? After all, she already had friends here, and what if she discovered that it wasn’t really any more exciting out there than it was here?
It wasn’t that she hadn’t started opening her mind to new possibilities either, she had. Over the last few years, the desire to leave to find adventure had been pushed to one side, but the desire to find that special someone to share her life with had become stronger with each romance novel she read. She wanted to feel that excitement—that heady love-at-first-sight thing.
That’s where the soulmate list came into it. She’d taken what she’d learned from Mindfulness and Manifesting a New You to heart—the whole attracting-what-you-put-out thing made sense to her. Gran had been a big believer in it, even if she hadn’t read a single book about manifesting. She’d always said, ‘If you smile, people will smile back at you, but if you walk into a room with a sour look on your face … well, everyone’s going to avoid you, aren’t they?’ It was pretty much the same principle—you attract the vibration you send out. So Bel had written her list and sent it out to the universe to bring her a soulmate. So far, the universe was working slowly, but that suited the part of her that was a little bit afraid that meeting her soulmate would mean leaving Wessex. But if that was what the universe had in store for her, then she supposed it would give her an opportunity or sign. Bel just hoped that when that day came, she’d be ready.
She glanced up from placing a dinner plate in the dishwasher to find Dean carrying in more dirty cups and cutlery.
‘Thanks. Put them down anywhere,’ Bel said, gesturing towards the countertop.
‘I’ve been meaning to say hello and catch up properly when I’ve been in the shop, but you’ve always been busy.’
Bel looked up at him again, wondering why he was so fidgety. ‘Yeah, it gets a bit hectic sometimes.’
‘I didn’t want you thinking that I was being unfriendly or … anything,’ he said, handing her a glass tumbler.
‘It’s okay,’ Bel said. ‘We weren’t close or anything at school.’
‘I guess not. That’s probably my fault. I was talking to Craig earlier, and we were reminiscing about the old days … we were little shits back then, to be honest,’ he said, sending her an off-centre kind of grin.
For a moment his smile caught her off guard. ‘You were ,’ Bel agreed, ignoring the strange moment. ‘You used to make fun of me reading at lunchtime and play keep-away with my books whenever you got the chance. Then there was the frog-in-my-lunch-box incident.’
He chuckled. ‘That was kinda funny … your face when you opened the box and it was sitting there, looking up at you. But it wasn’t just me,’ he protested.
She gave an involuntary shudder at the memory. Still to this day, she hated frogs. ‘No, I suppose not.’ Now that she thought about it, she did recall that Craig and a few of the other boys they’d hung around with back then had been equally annoying. Funny that she’d mostly only remembered Dean.
‘I was surprised to see you still in town, though.’
‘I don’t know why. There’s a fair proportion of other kids you went through school with who never left town.’
‘Yeah, but they’re mostly guys who stayed on the family property, or a few girls who married local blokes, like Emma. I guess I figured there was something about you even back then.’ He hesitated before hurriedly continuing, ‘You always had this faraway look in your eyes, like you could see some kind of big future. Or maybe,’ he continued with a hint of a smile, ‘it was because you’d get all high and mighty and stare down your nose at me when you got angry. I remember you telling me that I should try reading a book so I’d know there was more to the world than stupid sheep and tractors.’
Bel felt a twinge of shame. She did recall saying something like that to him, which was rather condescending of her, even if he probably had deserved it at the time.
‘I always thought you’d head off into the big city and do something exciting with your life.’
Bel stared at him, irritated afresh. ‘As opposed to staying here and doing absolutely nothing with my life?’
‘I didn’t mean it like that,’ he started.
‘Just because I chose to stay and take care of my gran instead of going away to university or ag college or whatever doesn’t mean I’ve wasted my life.’
‘No, of course—’
‘You’ve barely been back five minutes and you think you have the right to look down your nose at me? You don’t know anything about me.’
‘I didn’t mean to—’
‘What? Tell me how pathetic my life is?’
‘That’s not what I—’
Bel shut the dishwasher door and dried her hands on a tea towel, which she then tossed onto the now clean bench. ‘I really don’t care. Goodnight,’ she snapped, walking down the hall. She waved at Emma as she passed the doorway of the bedroom where her friend was in the process of detangling herself from a sleeping child. It was perfectly timed, because she knew Emma would have tried to talk her out of leaving. ‘I’ll call you tomorrow,’ she whispered from the door.
The moon hung low, casting a silvery glow upon the choppy waters as Jax and Angelica, their faces etched with determination, sped across the darkened expanse of water in a sleek speedboat. Behind them, the menacing silhouette of the drug cartel’s vessel loomed, its engines roaring as they gave chase through the labyrinthine waterways.
With every pulse of the engine, the tension in the air mounted. Adrenaline coursed through Jax’s veins as he pushed the speedboat to its limits. The wind whipped through their hair, their eyes fixed on the distant horizon, their every sense on high alert for signs of danger.
As they raced along the narrow channels and hidden inlets, the cartel’s pursuit grew ever more relentless, coming closer with each passing moment. But Jax was undeterred, his steely gaze locked on the path ahead as he navigated the treacherous waters with unwavering skill.
The cartel’s vessel drew near, its searchlights piercing the darkness as they closed in. Jax, using every ounce of strength and cunning he possessed, pushed the speedboat to the brink.
As they raced into the open sea, the cartel’s vessel fell behind, its engines no match for the speed of Jax’s boat. With a surge of triumph, they disappeared into the darkness, their mission far from over, but their spirits unbroken.
As she read, Bel ignored her phone ringing. She wasn’t in the mood to talk. All she wanted was to stay curled up and lost in this alternate universe where she could be swept up in romance and a little bit of danger, all the while knowing that she’d be fine by the end of the book and get her happily-ever-after. Why couldn’t real life be like that?