Rebecca Winters: The One Winter Collection

It had been the classic wedding cliché—the chief bridesmaid and the best man getting caught in a passionate clinch.

Lizzie cringed at the memory of those moments. The hoots and catcalls of the other guests as they’d discovered them kissing. ‘Jesse’s at it again,’ someone had called, laughing.

She’d never felt more humiliated. Not because of being caught kissing. They were both single adults who could kiss whomever they darn well pleased. She’d laughed that off. No. The humiliation was caused by the painful awareness she’d been seen as just another in a long line of Jesse’s girls. Girls he had kissed and discarded when the next pretty face had come along.

But, despite knowing that, it hadn’t stopped her from going back for more with Jesse that night. Why had she imagined he’d be any different with her?

What an idiot she’d been.

Now she cleared her throat, determined to make normal—if stilted—conversation; not to let Jesse know how shaken she was at seeing him again. How compellingly attractive she still found him.

‘Aren’t you meant to be gallivanting around the world doing good works? I thought you were in India,’ she asked. Jesse worked for an international aid organisation that built housing for the victims of natural disasters.

Jesse shook his head. ‘The Philippines this time. Rebuilding villages in the aftermath of a gigantic mudslide. Thousands of houses were destroyed.’

‘That must have been dangerous,’ she said. Jesse was a party guy personified, and yet his job took him to developing countries where he used his skills as an engineer to help strangers in need. She’d found that contradiction fascinating.

Just another way she’d been sucked into his game.

‘Dangerous and dirty,’ he said simply. ‘But that’s what we do.’

She shouldn’t feel a surge of relief that he had escaped that danger without harm. But she did. Though she told herself that was just because he was part of the extended family now. The black sheep, as far as she was concerned.

‘So you’re back here because...?’

‘The “good works” led to an injured shoulder,’ he said. He raised his broad right shoulder to demonstrate and in doing so winced. His so-handsome face contorted in pain and the blood drained, leaving him pale under his tan.

Her first reaction was to rush over and comfort him. To stroke his shoulder to help ease the pain. Or offer to kiss it better...

No! She forced her thoughts away from Crazyville. Gripped her hands tightly together so she wouldn’t be tempted. She was furious with herself. Wasn’t she meant to now be immune to his appeal?

Getting together with Jesse Morgan at the wedding had been like nibbling on just one square of a bar of fine Belgian dark chocolate and denying herself the rest even though she knew it would be utterly delicious. Quite possibly the best chocolate she had ever tasted.

But she prided herself on her willpower when it came to chocolate. And men who offered her nothing more than a fleeting physical thrill.

Her aim was to build a new life for her and Amy. She didn’t want a man around to complicate things. Not now. Maybe not ever. And if she did decide to date again it wouldn’t be with someone like Jesse Morgan. She’d been there, done that, with her good-looking charmer of an ex-husband who had let her down so badly.

The next man for her—if she decided to go there—would be steady, reliable, living in the same country as her and average-looking. She wanted a man who only had eyes for her.

Jesse was a player and Lizzie didn’t want to play. Her party-girl days were far behind her. It would be work, work, work for her in Dolphin Bay. And being the best mother she could possibly be to her precious daughter.

Not that Jesse was giving her any indication that he had a real interest in her. Not now. Not then. It still stung. How could she have believed in him?

After they’d been interrupted on the balcony, she’d rushed away to look in on Amy. When she’d returned, out of breath from her hurry to get back to Jesse, she had found him dancing with a beautiful dark-haired woman, his head too close to hers, his laughter ringing out over the noise of the band. Had he taken her out onto the balcony and kissed her too? Lizzie hadn’t hung around to find out. She’d avoided him for the rest of the evening.

‘I’m sorry to hear you’ve been hurt,’ she said stiffly.

Boy, had she wanted to hurt him back then.

‘All in the line of duty,’ he said. ‘My own fault for grappling with a too-large concrete beam without help.’

‘So you’ve come home to recuperate?’ she asked. She became aware of the carving pressing into her back and moved from the countertop, being careful not to take a step closer to him. Her reaction to him had unnerved her. She didn’t know that she could trust herself not to reach out to him if she got too near.

‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘But I’m bored with all the physiotherapy and “taking it easy”. I’ve been helping Ben and Sandy finish off the café.’ He looked around him with a proprietorial air that she found disconcerting. ‘Impressive, isn’t it?’

‘Very,’ she said. ‘I love the dolphin carvings. Every business in this town has to display some kind of dolphin motif, if I remember correctly. These are works of art.’

She kept her tone neutral but inside she was seething. In all their phone calls and Skype discussions about the progress of the café, Sandy had never once mentioned that Jesse was back in town. Her sister, along with everyone else in this gossip-ridden small town, knew she and Jesse had been caught making out on the balcony.

It wouldn’t have been a huge deal anywhere else but here it was big news. Jesse was the kind of guy the locals kept odds on. The big bets were on that he would never settle down with one woman.

She found herself nervously glancing out of the plate glass windows that led to the street for fear people walking by might notice her and Jesse alone together.

She didn’t want to become part of the Jesse mythology. Be a butt of local jokes. But her indiscretion on the night of the wedding meant, most likely, she’d been added to the list of his conquests. Why hadn’t Sandy warned her Jesse had made an unscheduled visit home? That he’d be working on the café? It would be almost impossible to avoid him.

As Jesse reached out to touch the dolphin carvings, she jerked away from him to avoid any possible contact. He raised a dark eyebrow but didn’t say anything. Which made her feel even more ill at ease.

‘They’re by the same Balinese carvers as the fittings next door in Bay Books,’ he said, stroking the dolphin. She couldn’t look, couldn’t let herself remember how good his hands had felt on the bare skin of her back in her strapless bridesmaid dress. ‘Sandy had the countertop custom-made and then imported it. I only finished installing it yesterday.’

‘So you’ve completed work on the fit-out now?’ She spoke through gritted teeth. Please, please, please let him be on his way back to his job in the Philippines.

‘Just about.’

She sighed with too-obvious relief. ‘So you won’t be around much longer.’

Only a tightening of his beautifully chiselled lips betrayed he’d noticed her tone.

‘There’s the unpacking to do. And I still have to finish off some tiling upstairs in your apartment,’ he said.

‘You’ve been working up there?’ She regretted the squawk of alarm as soon as it had escaped from her mouth. Jesse in her bathroom; maybe in her bedroom? The thought was disconcerting, to say the least.

But she couldn’t let him know she was worried he would invade her private thoughts when she was alone in those rooms. She mustn’t let that happen.