Page 46 of The Heir Apparent

“Classic ensembles.”

“Your turn,” he said, his voice lowering to smokier notes that fanned the flames inside me.

“I was in this suit with a big hat,” I said.

“Was?”

“Well, the suit had to go back to the designer.”

“So you’re just in the hat,” he said teasingly, always giving me an out, always sensing when we were drifting into territory I might find dangerous.

“Just the hat.”

In the days after the helicopter broke up our kiss, we barely spoke. Grieving and overwhelmed, I couldn’t cope with the idea that my friendship with Jack might change too. So I’d panicked and avoided his calls for weeks. But once I had committed to spending some time in England, we eased back into regular conversation. He usually called when he woke just before dawn, which was dinner time in London. If I had an evening event, I would call him from bed, the phone on my pillow, just as it had been when I lay in the barn, his voice all around me as I tried to sleep. We talked about everything. Except what I planned to do at the end of the year.

“Do you remember when we went swimming at Wineglass Bay?” I asked, though I knew he remembered. He had still been with Georgia then, but she’d had a furniture show in Melbourne and couldn’t come camping. After dinner, Jack and I went down to the beach alone, took off our clothes and strode through the waves so we could float where it was calm. Intoxicated by the moment, I forgot that I was scared of the night sea. I couldn’t look at black water without imagining Mum slipping below. But suddenly I was up to my neck in it, looking at Jack, who was slick and glowing under the moonlight, and the fear returned.

Sensing it, he swam towards me. “Want to go back in?”

I shook my head and breathed. “Just give me a minute.”

Tentatively, he wrapped his hands around my waist to buoy me, ruffling the nerve endings under my skin. I eased closer,folding my arms around his shoulders, disturbing the droplets there, feeling the strong lines of his neck. We floated like that, quietly, until Jack’s eyes darkened and he cleared his throat. “We should go back in,” he’d said.

His voice brought me back to the present. “I remember,” he said. “Are you going to ask if I was thinking about kissing you then? Because, as I said, it’s your turn.”

My stomach went warm, and I felt the old precipitous danger. “You had a girlfriend. I didn’t want to be that person.”

“No. Same,” he said, and then he laughed. “I regret it now.”

“Don’t ever regret being a good guy.” We were quiet for a minute, and I could just make out the fluty warble of the magpies on the vineyard. I felt a craving for home, even as I sat in the house I grew up in. “What are you doing today?”

He paused. “James is in town. I’m having a beer with him later.”

I nodded, even though he couldn’t see me. James’s disapproval of my decision to return to my family had been like a southerly buster, an icy wind blowing all the way to London from Tasmania. He did not return my calls and texts, only voicing his disappointment via Jack or Finn.

“Well, say hello for me, I guess.”

“I will,” he said.

There was a clatter of metal that I knew to be the bolt on the main shed.

“You’re about to lose reception—I should let you go,” I said.

“I don’t need to go in yet,” he said, and I imagined him settling on the old wooden bench outside. “You’re not worried about these tabloid rumours, are you?”

I thought for a moment. “I don’t think so. It’s more that I don’t know what Richard will do next. It’s always waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

“Does he know… you know, about Louis?”

“No,” I said. “Hardly anyone knows now.”

“Try not to worry, okay?”

I smiled.

“Are you really just wearing a hat and nothing else?” he suddenly asked, and I laughed.

“Just a hat,” I lied. “Goodnight.”