Christy McKellen - Mills & Boon Showcase

Sandy frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

He handed her the photo. Astounded, she looked from it to him and back again. ‘But it’s of me. Of you. Of us.’

The simple wooden frame held a faded snap of her very young self and Ben with their arms around each other. She—super-slim—was wearing a tiny pink floral-patterned bikini; her hair was wet and tangled with salt and fell almost to her waist. She was looking straight at the camera with a confident, happy smile. Ben’s surfer hair was long and sun-streaked and he was wearing blue Hawaiian print board shorts. He wasn’t looking at the camera but rather down at her, with an expression of pride and possession heartrendingly poignant on a teenager.

She had to clear her throat before she spoke. ‘Where did you get this from?’

‘From you. Don’t you remember?’

Slowly the memory returned to her. ‘Lizzie took this photo. We had to get the film developed at the chemist in those days. I bought the frame from the old general store. And I gave it to you to...to remember me by.’ She’d had a copy, too. Had shoved it in the back of an old photo album that was heaven knew where now.

‘Jodi found it at the bottom of a drawer in my room just before we got married. She brought it to me and said we needed to talk.’

‘I...I thought you would have thrown it out.’

‘She thought so too. She asked me was I still carrying a torch for you.’

‘Wh...what did you say?’

‘I said I’d cared for you once but was now totally committed to her.’

Sandy swallowed hard against a kick of that unwarranted jealousy. ‘You...you were getting married. Wouldn’t she know that?’

‘We were getting married because she was pregnant with Liam.’

Sandy let out a gasp of surprise. ‘I...I didn’t know that.’

‘Of course you didn’t. But she was sensitive about it. Wanted me to reassure her that I wasn’t marrying her just because I “had to”.’

‘Poor Jodi.’ Her heart went out to the lovely girl who had cared so much for Ben, and she wished she had more than vague memories of her.

‘So, you see, as far as Jodi was concerned you were the “third person”, as you put it, in our marriage.’

‘I...I don’t really know what to say. If...if you were married I wouldn’t come anywhere near you.’

‘I know that. You know that. And I’m sure Jodi knew that. But no matter how much I reassured her that we would have got married anyway, just maybe not so soon, she had that little nagging doubt that she was my second choice.’

‘And yet you...you didn’t throw out the photo.’ She was still holding the frame in her hands, her fingers tightly curled around the edge.

‘No. I went to put it in the bin, to prove my point, but Jodi stopped me. Said it was unrealistic to expect we wouldn’t each come into the marriage with a past. She just wanted to make sure you stayed in the past.’

‘And here I am...in...in the future.’

‘I hadn’t thought about this photo in years. Then, after that morning on the beach with you and Hobo, I dug it out from a box in the storeroom at the hotel.’

‘And put it on display?’

Ben took the photo frame from her hands and placed it back on top of the dresser. ‘Where it will stay,’ he said.

‘So...so why did you hide it from me yesterday?’

‘I thought you’d think it was strange that I’d kept it. It was too soon.’

‘But it’s not too soon now?’

‘We’ve come a long way since yesterday.’

‘Yes,’ she said. She made a self-conscious effort to laugh. But it came out as something more strangled. ‘Who knows where we’ll get to in the next three days?’

It was a rhetorical question she wished she hadn’t uttered as soon as she’d said it. But Ben just nodded.

He picked up the photo frame and then put it back down again. ‘If you’re okay with it, I’ll keep it here.’

‘Of course,’ she said, speaking through a lump of emotion in her throat. ‘And I don’t expect you to keep photos of Jodi buried in a drawer while I’m around.’

But, please, no photos of Liam on display. No way could she deal with that while she was dealing with the thought that if it worked out with Ben she would see the demise of her dream of having her own kids.

‘She was a big part of my life. I’m glad you don’t want to deny that.’

‘Of course I recognise that. Like...like she did about me.’

She looked again at the long-ago photo and wondered how Jodi had felt when she’d seen it. How sensible Jodi had been not to deny Ben his past. She had to do the same. But there was still that nagging doubt.

‘I still can’t help but wonder if I can compete with the memory of someone so important to you.’

He cupped her chin with his big scarred hands. ‘As I said before, it’s not a competition. You’re so different. She was the safe harbour, calm waters. You’re the breaking waves, the white-water excitement.’

‘Both calm waters and breaking waves can be good,’ she said, understanding what he meant and feeling a release from her fears. She hoped she, too, could at times become a safe harbour for him.

If she were to carry the wave analogy to its conclusion, Jason had been the dumper wave that had started off fast and exciting and then crashed her, choking and half drowning, onto the hard, gritty sand.

But what she felt for Ben defied all categorisation. He was both safe harbour and wild wave, and everything else she wanted, in one extraordinary man. And she longed to be everything to him.

But she couldn’t tell him that. Not yet. Not until the three days were over.

‘How long until you have to be back at the shop?’ Ben asked.

‘How long do we need?’ she murmured as she slid her arms around his waist and kissed him.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

SANDY TURNED THE ‘Back in One Hour’ sign—it had stretched to one and a half hours—so it read ‘Open’ and dashed into the shop. She spent a few minutes fixing her hair and make-up so the next contingent of too-interested ladies who came in wouldn’t immediately guess how she’d spent her lunch hour. Wouldn’t that make the Dolphin Bay grapevine hum...?

But customers were few—maybe she wasn’t such a novelty any more. Or maybe, because it was such a hot day, people would rather be on the beach. She lifted her hair from her neck to cool it. It was warm in here today, despite her fiddling with the air-conditioning controls.

In the lull, after a lady had been seeking the latest celebrity chef cookbook and a man had wanted a history of the Dolphin Bay fishing fleet, she pulled out her fairy notebook. The glitter shimmered onto the countertop. It was time to revisit her thirtieth birthday resolutions.

She read them through again, with her Hotel Harbourside pen poised to make amendments.

1. Get as far away from Sydney as possible while remaining in realms of civilisation and within reach of a good latte.

Tick.

Dolphin Bay was four hours away from Sydney, and Ben’s hotel café did excellent coffee. But her stay depended on a rekindled relationship of uncertain duration.

2. Find new job where can be own boss.

Tick.

The possibility of owning Bay Books exceeded the ‘new job’ expectations. She scribbled, Add gift section to bookshop—enquire if can be sub-franchisee for candles.

But, again, the possible job depended entirely on her relationship with Ben. She wouldn’t hang around in Dolphin Bay if they kissed goodbye for good on Wednesday.

She hesitated when she came to resolution number three. As opposed to the flippy thing, her heart gave a painful lurch.

3. Find kind, interesting man with no hang-ups who loves me the way I am and who wants to get married and have three kids, two girls and a boy.