Page 4

JENNA

The crowd below me is a blur, and I waver in my glossy patent heels. But it’s too late to turn and dive for the safety of my bedroom. There is a hush in the room and every face turns towards me. And then a disturbing and surreal sound—applause.

At the foot of the stairs, a young woman in a tight sequined dress—sequins? Really? For fuck’s sake, this is Cluanie—slaps her palms together in polite applause that spreads like a ripple across the room. I swear I’ve never felt so embarrassed in my life. Not even when I walked on stage beside Dad to support him, when he received the Coach of the Year award, with a bit of loo paper stuck to my Jimmy Choos. Whenever I see the footage, I still cringe at that nasty piece of glaring white tissue lodged on the leather sole of my first truly excessive footwear purchase.

I plaster a smile on my face. Get it right Jenna. Just enough to look modestly appreciative, but not too much, or you’ll appear smug. Mustn’t look like I expected this.

I grip the banister on the way down, careful not to slither off the carpeted edge of a stair in my unsuitable shoes. Now is not the time to make a spectacle of myself, even in front of what appears to be a warmly welcoming hometown crowd.

“Jenna, darling, you look gorgeous.” At the foot of the stairs, Laura Darby folds me into her embrace. She never notices my awkwardness with hugs. As always, she presses my angular shoulders against her ample bosom, and tonight it’s surprisingly comforting.

Laura is the gracious first lady of Cluanie Rugby Football Club. Her husband, Grant, as President, is still in disbelief that someone with Dad’s pedigree would step up and volunteer to coach the first division team. And Laura, mother to four big strapping boys, perhaps seeing the opportunity for a daughterless mother and a motherless daughter to build a relationship, has taken me under her wing. My normal resistance to any form of mollycoddling slips away in her presence.

It’s not quite a receiving line, but Laura sweeps me along, as I’m greeted by one woman after another. She has an innate sense of the hierarchy of this social situation, first introducing me to some of the older wives and girlfriends who have come along to support their men.

Not that any of them would have missed it. There’s not much to do in Cluanie on a Saturday night. A party with free booze and free food—even if it is the slightly suspect posh fare Dad requested—is an irresistible attraction. The dazzle of cocktail dresses, heels, and make-up suggests it’s also a rare opportunity for these women to put on their glad rags and have a little fun.

I suppose I expected hostility from some of them. After six years’ experience on the pro rugby circuit with the Highlanders, I’ve learned that WAGS are an odd bunch, often insecure and rarely welcoming to other women. No matter how hard I tried to project an air of professionalism, most didn’t understand that my interest in their men wasn’t to fuck them, but simply to make sure they didn’t fuck up. Or if they did, to cover their dirty little tracks. It was my job to ensure player trysts with women in airport bathrooms didn’t hit the media, not leap in there with them.

Perhaps that was another reason they didn’t trust me—the suspicion I knew things about their husbands and boyfriends that they didn’t. In many cases that was true, but I couldn’t tell them, much as sometimes I’d have liked to. Spending my life surrounded by men, I’ve come to realise overall they’re an untrustworthy species.

But here, no one seems to herd their guys away from me, or stare me down with pouts of collagen-filled lips or challenging glares from beneath heavy fake lashes. Of course, it might be sympathy. They all know about Mum. Or maybe it’s because they don’t feel threatened by a thirty-four-year-old with crinkles at the corner of her eyes and the hint of a furrow between her brows.

Perhaps they see no competition from my big butt on display in tight jeans. But then, as always, I think of Kim Kardashian’s highly-lauded curvy arse and push away any doubts about the attractiveness of my own. I may not be able to balance a glass of champagne on it, but the taut outlines show the results of my daily workout—although that’s always been more a way of keeping my sanity intact rather than a desperate desire to make my body into something it’s not.

Travelling with a professional sports team, I never lacked access to the gear, and even now back in Cluanie, Dad’s set up an entire gym room in one corner of this vast house. That room has been my refuge in the dark days since Mum died. I haven’t let things slip. So, while I know I’ll never be small, either clothed or unclothed, I’m not dissatisfied with my appearance.

We weave our way through the room, finally stopping in front of the woman Laura evidently considers the least of them—just a girl, really—the one who started the applause. She’s wide-eyed and long-lashed, like a cute blonde doll. Tiny, she looks adorable in her pink glitter-ball of a dress.

“Hi Jenna,” she says, extending her hand and clasping it over mine. “I’ve been so excited to meet you. I’m Skylar—Brandon Smith’s girlfriend?”

She casts a proud glance towards where Brandon is chatting to a group of the older guys in the team. He’s an anomaly. Most young people can’t wait to get out of Cluanie. The moment they’ve got their high school exams done, or sometimes even before, they’re hurtling out of here with barely a backward glance. Yes, I was one of those, too. I’m a cliché. Some come back, but usually not till they’ve put a good few years between them and Cluanie, or something unexpected forces them to return home. Me again.

But here’s Brandon, nineteen years old, professional teams waving attractive contracts in front of him, and yet he brushes them away. I don’t understand what is keeping him here. Maybe this is it—young love.

“Oh, yeah, Brandon,” I say, “He’s our star player, for sure.”

It’s a sincere compliment. Dad couldn’t believe his luck when Brandon rolled in on his first night at the club. I saw Grant Darby’s grin, and his quiet aside, “Don’t question it, mate. Just accept that sometimes the man up top is smiling down on us.”

“Well, I think you’re a star,“ the girl says quietly, a small flush of embarrassment on her face. My god, I realise this kid is fan-girling—over me. I’ve seen admiration for my work before—after all, I’m very good at my job—but never this adoration from a stranger.

“I’ve read all about you, seen you on telly, followed the things you’ve done. If I could only hope to achieve half of what you have, I’d be happy.”

“So, you want to go into PR?”

She nods. I can’t imagine this innocent baby has what it takes to survive in the world I inhabit—inhabited, I correct myself. This year’s leave from my position at the Highlanders has given me breathing space. Setting up my own little sports PR company in the interim has taken my mind off the grief, and allowed me to be selective with my clients. Already it’s less brutal. But I learned from the years of long hard slog, a struggle that’s also given me a very thick skin—one I doubt this gentle kid could ever develop.

“I do,” she says. “I made sure I took all the right subjects. I’m just waiting for exam results for my Advanced Highers. I’m going to work for a year—doing nights waiting tables and in the kitchen at The Railway. And then next year I’ll go to university.” Her face is brimming with hope, so damn eager. Did I look like that once? “And,” she says, swallowing, looking up at me from under a nervous flutter of charcoal lashes, “I was wondering…if you might…take me on. Not paid, I mean,” she rushes to add. “Just work experience. I’ll do anything. Make you coffee, do filing, run errands. Just a chance to see what you do firsthand.”

I’m a little in awe of this meek-looking kid. Maybe she has got an inner grit there, just wrapped in a sweet, pretty package. At eighteen, I certainly wasn’t brave enough to do what she’s doing, and back myself like this .

I can’t turn her down, not in the face of that earnestness and sheer guts. I’m not swayed by the fact she got an entire room full of people to applaud me like I’m the bloody Queen. It’s the realisation that up till now I’ve only taken from others—learned from their knowledge and experience—and maybe this is my chance to give something back.

“Skylar, that would be great.” I offer her my most encouraging smile. “How about you pop in here and see me on Monday? Do you see that little summerhouse just past the pool?” She follows the direction of my gaze past the enormous pool lit up like some resort on the Riviera, towards the place I spend my days. It has a cosiness about it that is lacking in the rest of this mansion Dad has bought. “That’s my office. Follow the path around from the front entrance, and you’ll find me there.”

Still overwhelmed by her blind adoration, I pull away, muttering excuses about other people I need to catch up with.

As I cross the room, trying to look purposeful, though unsure of exactly where I’m headed, I’m sure I hear Kyle Stewart say the words ‘nice rack’. His knowing grin meets mine, and I’m convinced he’s talking about me. If it were anyone but Kyle, I might take it as a compliment.

Instead, I feel an urge to go over there and slap him, but Dad would never forgive me for wrecking his party and I’m not about to give Kyle any opportunity to get any closer to that nice rack. He got those big hands on my tits—and fuck it the rest of me—when I was an easily impressed teenager. I’m not going to offer him the opportunity to ogle them at close range now.

I take an angry swipe at a glass of bubbles and head for the kitchen. In our old house, the kitchen was always a sanctuary. In its homely space, Mum bustled around, sometimes elbows deep in flour at the wooden bench top, or wrestling a roasting pan into the old Aga. The kitchen was her happy place, as well as the home to plasters for grazed knees, hot chocolate to soothe a sleepless child and an endless supply of love.

This kitchen bristles with the clatter of dishes on granite bench tops. Catering staff from Buchanan House move in an elegant dance balancing trays of fancy canapes—the kind of finger food my dad would have once scoffed at. How far we’ve come, and there’s an uneasy sense that the change isn’t for the better.

I gulp the champagne, and the rush of bubbles fills my stomach with a pleasantly soothing fizziness. The effect doesn’t last.

While this kitchen is alien to that past version of myself, foreign to the nostalgic memories of my childhood, it still hurts that Mum isn’t in it. Even if she had buckled to caterers invading her space, she’d have been here in the thick of it, ordering them around. The stab of pain at her absence is too great and I snatch another champagne glass from a tray, beating the surprised young man carrying it to the door.

I flee onto the terrace. Late summer in Cluanie carries a strong breath of winter. Out here, the chilly air soothes the flickering threat of migraine. Alone. Peaceful.

No, not alone. The man at the end of the pavers staring off into the manicured garden swigs from a beer bottle. There’s something familiar in that mess of golden curls. Not so much the plaid shirt, or the chunky heels of a pair of boots visible below his jeans—no one in Cluanie dresses like that. Looks like the star of one of Dad’s favourite old spaghetti westerns has ridden into town .

I stop, thinking to seek solitude elsewhere, but he’s heard me. As he turns, a soft smile slides across his face—Geordie MacDonald, looking none the worse for Arsehole Andy’s attack. He strolls towards me, the smile morphing into a genuinely delighted grin, white teeth glowing in the dim twilight.

“Jenna.” His deep mellow voice is at odds with the high-pitched child’s cheeky teasing of my memories; a voice that triggers something liquid inside me, like the delicious warmth of a hot mocha. “Good to see you.”

He closes the gap between us, abandoning his beer on the table, and two strong arms fold around me. I relax into his broad chest, all my sharp corners falling away with a hug that feels like home. I don’t fight it, my instinct to draw back unexpectedly subdued. When he gently releases me, the coolness of the evening air is suddenly unwelcome, like it’s fought its way between me and the very thing I need. I tip my head up to meet a pair of kind eyes, a greyish blue. I’m acutely aware of his broad hands still resting on my forearms, warm and steadying.

“I’m so sorry about your mum.” His eyes hold so much genuine empathy. This isn’t just platitudes, someone saying the scripted lines. “She was such a lovely lady. I would have come to the funeral but…”

“Thanks, Geordie.” He’s the first person brave enough to mention her tonight. The instant sharp slash of grief is soothed by the warm knowledge that here’s someone else who knew her, too; really knew her; and therefore someone who understands my loss.

After all, he spent many hours with her in the little music room out back of our old house, the sunny space I always picture Mum in when she comes to mind .

Geordie wasn’t one of the kids who begged for piano lessons. He, and Rachel before him, were the kind who suffered it, victims of a parent who projected his need to be a cut above the rest onto his offspring. Unlike Rachel, I believe Geordie had some talent. That didn’t stop him zooming out of there the moment the weekly lesson was over. I’d see his blonde curls disappearing out our front gate, bobbing along as he literally danced in celebration of his freedom.

But even with Geordie, mention of her still hurts; I move on quickly.

“Yeah, Rachel said you were down in the Pacific somewhere?”

“The Timor Sea. Sounds exotic, but hot as hell. Shore leave in Darwin—Australia—where every bloody animal wants to kill you, and some of the locals are pretty feral too.”

He laughs, a light, unfettered sound, like he’s broken free of all the world’s worries. How wonderful to just walk away from a job that no longer brings you joy. I’ve walked away from mine, too, even if it’s only temporarily . While I had no choice but to take leave from the Highlanders—with Mum sick, I did it without question—the fact I’ve barely given it a backward glance makes me wonder. Have I also broken free from something that no longer brought me joy? If so, maybe I shouldn’t go back.

“More feral than Cluanie?” I toss back with a smile.

“Way more,” he grins. “I’m not sorry to have left it behind. The day came when here just seemed the better option.”

“And how’s your mum doing?” I have fond memories of Aileen MacDonald. Just as my mother always gave her kids’ friends a warm welcome, Aileen was completely unfazed by Rachel and me living between our two houses. “I hear she’s improving. ”

“Yeah, she’s good,” he says. “Still struggling a bit with being on the receiving end of the nursing rather than the one doing it, but yeah, she’s getting there.”

It’s as if some maleficent being has turned its evil gaze on the good mothers of Cluanie this year. First my mother’s cancer, followed by Aileen’s heart attack; the shock has left our little town reeling. Selfishly, I hope the beast has moved on to other hunting grounds.

“She’ll be up to having visitors soon. You should pop in and see her. She’d like that.”

“I will,” I say, echoing the promise I’ve already made to Rachel.

“She still tires so easily. Maybe give it a week or so.”

He picks up his beer, throws his head back, and takes a long swig. I can’t help but follow the swallow rolling down the smooth golden line of his throat.

“So, here we are then,” I say. “Back in the hood.”

His eyes lock onto mine for a moment, then drift to my mouth. It’s noticeable in the dip of his head because little Geordie is not so little anymore. Taller than me, but not too tall. An upper body that suggests strength without bulkiness. A leanness indicating the agility essential for speed and rapid directional changes.

With the practised eye I’ve developed shadowing my father, I assess he’s pretty much perfect for the position Dad wants to play him in, at flanker. It was Dad’s own position, so although he’d never admit to it, he sets the bar extra high, especially for the guy on the blindside. He’ll ride their arse hard if they don’t live up to his exacting demands.

As if sensing my scrutiny, Geordie jerks his arctic blue-grey gaze back to me. My eyes meet his odd, glassy stare. He blinks, drawing my attention to his lashes so thick and long, the kind that girls spend large amounts of money acquiring by artificial means. I’d never noticed how beautiful his eyes were before, but then you don’t tend to stare into those of your best friend’s kid brother. Until now; and he’s no kid.

“Yeah,” he says, “I certainly never expected to choose life in Cluanie. Who’d have thought?”

“And you’re working with Sparky? That would be an experience in itself.”

“That’s one way to describe it,” he chuckles, a slight huskiness that is undeniably and surprisingly sexy. I wonder if he knows it? Probably not. There’s still a hint of the guileless kid in his gaze. “Never a dull moment with Sparky around. Just as well, as the work is fairly run-of-the-mill.”

His eyes drift south again, and nervously dart back to mine, and I get it. I realise this weird thing he’s got going on—he’s trying very hard not to look at my chest.

“Good man, Geordie,” I mutter under my breath, appreciating he’s making an effort when so many other males don’t bother to hide their desire to ogle.

And then my mouth falls open in a startling whirl of horror and confusion. I don’t know what’s worse; the thought that I’ve acknowledged the kid I haven’t seen for almost fifteen years is now a man—and a very attractive one too—or that I’ve spoken out loud. What the hell is wrong with me? Guarding my thoughts and choosing my words is second nature to me in my work. And now it’s not. Not with Geordie.

“What was that?” He frowns, and an adorable little crease furrows at the top of his nose. I have the ridiculous urge to kiss it away. Perhaps it’s the champagne making me a little crazy .

I’m not sure Geordie’s question and his confusion is because he heard what I said, or because he didn’t, but I’m saved either way when Connor Murray appears behind him.

Now that’s a good man, too—not that I’d ever cast lustful eyes in his direction. He was a mate of sorts back in high school and even now I see him firmly fixed in the friend zone. Just as I should be shoving too-damn-handsome for his own good, sweet-natured Geordie MacDonald solidly there alongside him.

“Hey, Geordie, Jenna. Better come in, eh?” Connor angles his head towards the brightly lit lounge. “Your old man’s about to make a speech.”

We follow him inside, where Dad stands on the third stair, an adoring audience arrayed below with all faces turned towards him. Geordie and I tag onto the back row. It’s squishy and, as we edge in closer, our hands touch, and a sensation races up my arm like an electric shock. What the hell is wrong with me?

Noticing me standing on tiptoes, trying to look beyond a line of people all taller than me, Geordie ushers me across with large gentle hands on my waist. Now I’ve got a clear line of sight, but also, as I tuck in front of him, there’s an acute hyper-awareness of his light lingering fingers, his breath brushing across my hair, and the heat of him, even though there’s space between his body and mine. I inhale deeply, checking. Yes, indeed, that intoxicating mingling of masculine musk and the citrus scent of a freshly-showered body, with an underlying hint of spicy liniment, emanates from him.

This is wrong on every level: best friend’s brothers are off limits, especially younger ones; Dad’s players are definitely off the menu, although I wonder if the rules still apply outside of a pro team .

I force myself to focus on my father’s lips moving, although I don’t hear a sound, apart from the stern warning my brain issues to my body, telling it the nine-month man drought is not a valid excuse for this sudden and inappropriate fixation on Geordie MacDonald.

I argue back against the cautious part of myself. This is more than a physical pull. Yes, the boy I knew has morphed into an undeniably attractive man, but there’s something else. After only a few moments of talking to Geordie, for the first time in ages, I feel more like my old self. It’s as if he sees me as the Jenna I used to be, young and full of promise, the world at my feet, not this weary version of myself going through the motions. It’s like a hit of some drug, instant, addictive.

“Jenna,” Geordie hisses in my ear, bringing me back to the horrible realisation that all eyes are upon me for the second time this evening.

“Come on love, don’t be shy,” Dad says with a grin that looks a lot like the old Robbie Sharpe. I can’t recall the last time I saw that expression. I’ve rarely glimpsed his happiness at anything since Mum got sick. He extends a hand towards me and the crowd parts to let me through. I make my way to join him, with the memory of Geordie MacDonald’s touch, those long fingers searing the skin of my waist, even through the glossy satin fabric of my top.